BR  121  .L24  1915 

Lake,  Kirsopp,  1872-1946 

The  stewardship  of  faith 


By  IQirsopp  Lake 


The  Historical  Evidence  for  the  Resurrection  of 
Jesus  Christ 

The  Stewardship  of  Faith 


THE    STEWARDSHIP 
OF   FAITH       , 

MAY   5  1915 


OUR    HERITAGE    FROM    EARL 
CHRISTIANITY 


BY 


KIRSOPP    LAKE 

PROFESSOR    OF    EARLY    CHRISTIAN    LITERATURE    IN 
HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 


LOWELL  LECTURES  IN  1913-14 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK    AND    LONDON 

Gbe   Ifcntckerbocket   press 

1915 


Copyright,  19  is 

by 
KIRSOPP   LAKE 


Ube  'fcnfcfeerbocfeer  press,  Hew  HJorfc 


PREFACE 

THE  following  pages  are  based  on  a  series  of 
lectures  given  at  the  Lowell  Institute  and 
in  the  King's  Chapel   in  Boston   in  19 13. 
They  have  been  rewritten  and  somewhat  enlarged, 
but  not  seriously  altered. 

The  title,  The  Stewardship  of  Faith,  has  been 
given  because  I  feel  that  the  most  important  fact 
which  emerges  from  the  study  of  Early  Christianity 
as  I  have  tried  to  present  it,  is  that  the  Church 
owes  its  position  to  the  endeavour  of  past  genera- 
tions to  hold  up  to  mankind  a  standard  of  life  in 
religion,  morality,  and  politics  higher  than  that 
reached  by  the  world  in  general.  Christians  were 
men  who  had  seen  a  vision.  Faith  was  their 
trust  in  the  Guide  who  offered  to  lead  them  to- 
wards it,  and  of  that  Faith  they  were  the  Stewards. 
It  was  expressed  in  many  different  ways:  in  a 
series  of  theological  and  metaphysical  propositions ; 
in  the  splendour  and  pomp  of  sacramental  liturgy ; 
in  the  imposing  structure  of  Christian  ethics. 
But  all  these  things  were  the  expression,  not  the 

iii 


IV 


Preface 


essence,  of  the  Faith  which  overcame  the  world; 
and  the  churches  will  fail  in  their  stewardship  if 
they  confuse  the  expression  with  the  reality,  and 
forget  that  it  is  their  office  to  protest  against  the 
world  as  it  is,  in  the  interests  of  the  world  as  it 
might  be. 

The  responsibility  of  those  who  teach  Chris- 
tianity at  present  is  twofold.  First,  never  to  lose 
sight  of  the  vision  of  a  better  world,  and  to  teach 
their  pupils  to  join  with  them  in  seeing  visions  and 
dreaming  dreams;  secondly,  by  the  study  of  the 
past,  and  by  keeping  keen  the  edge  of  the  intellect 
of  themselves  and  of  others,  never  yielding  to  the 
temptation  to  obscure  the  difficulties  of  fact  by 
taking  refuge  in  the  ambiguities  of  language,  to 
further  the  exact  knowledge  of  the  world  as  it  is, 
in  order  that  those  who  have  the  vision  may  also 
have  the  practical  ability  to  use  it  in  the  service  of 
progress. 

I  have  tried  to  show  the  way  in  which  the  first 
Christians  did  this  work,  by  translating  their 
message  from  the  terms  of  Jewish  thought  to  those 
of  the  Greco-Roman  world,  and  adding  to  it 
considerably  in  the  process.  And  I  have  also 
tried  to  suggest  that  the  churches  of  to-day  ought 
to  consider  seriously  the  necessity  for  moving  on 
in  the  same  direction  and  giving  to  the  world  a 


Preface  v 

theology  which  will  comply  with  the  reasonable 
claims  of  the  intelligence,  an  organization  which 
will  be  capable  of  serving  adequately  the  spiritual 
requirements  of  human  souls,  and  an  ethic  which 
will  satisfy  both  the  individual  and  social  needs  of 
a  New  Age.  For  a  New  Age  is  coming  speedily 
upon  us,  and  whether  it  is  to  come  in  light  or  in 
darkness  depends  on  the  clearness  of  vision  and 
singleness  of  purpose  of  the  Stewards  of  Faith. 

Kirsopp  Lake. 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  October,  19 14. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — Apocalyptic  Judaism  i 

II. — The  Teaching  of  Jesus  and  the 
Background  of  Apocalyptic 
Judaism         .....       22 

III. — The  Spread  of  the  Church  to  the 

Roman  Empire       ....       58 

IV. — The  Antiochene  Mission  and  Early 

Gentile  Christianity    .         .         .91 

V. — The  Church  and  Heathenism  .         .123 

VI. — The  Church  and  Gnosticism     .         .145 

VII. — The     Church     and     Uninstructed 

Christianity         .         .         .         .168 

VIII. — Conclusion 189 

Appendix.         .....     213 

Index 231 


vu 


The  Stewardship  of  Faith 


CHAPTER  I 

APOCALYPTIC  JUDAISM 

Introduction — Nationalism — B  abylon — Rome — The  Jews — The 
Catastrophic  View  of  History — Apocalyptic  Literature — 
Enoch — Its  Intellectual  Justification — Importance  as  a 
Spiritual  Factor — Baruch — Jewish  Hopes  for  Hastening 
the  Coming  of  the  Kingdom. 

OF  recent  years  we  have  been  repeatedly 
warned  that  Christianity  is  at  the  cross 
roads.  If  closely  analyzed,  however,  this 
warning  does  not  throw  doubt  on  the  value  of 
religion,  or  on  the  great  part  played  by  the  Chris- 
tian Church  in  the  history  of  Western  civilization; 
but  it  is  a  serious  indictment  of  the  Christianity 
of  our  own  time  as  a  satisfactory  expression  of 
religious  life. 

For  Christianity  is,  and  has  long  been,  in  some 
sense  more  than  religion.  It  is  religion,  for  it 
represents  the  feeling  of  intercourse  between  man 


2  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

and  some  higher  power,  and  also  the  struggle  on 
the  part  of  man  to  develop  that  side  of  his  nature 
which,  although  his  own,  yet  seems  so  strangely  to 
be  different  from  the  rest  of  his  consciousness,  and 
to  be  a  link  between  him  and  some  world  of  higher 
realities.  But  it  is  also  the  attempt  to  express 
these  two  factors — always  central  in  religion  as 
such — in  intellectual  language,  and  so  to  give  us 
not  merely  religion  but  also  theology;  for  the- 
ology is  the  expression  of  religion  in  the  language 
of  the  intellect.  Moreover,  not  only  is  Chris- 
tianity theology  as  well  as  religion,  it  is  also  the 
expression  of  religion  in  action,  and  has  become  a 
code  of  ethics — of  conduct.  It  has  gone  even 
further,  and  has  striven  to  give  institutional 
expression  to  religion,  theology,  and  ethics  as 
mutually  dependent  on  one  another,  in  a  series 
of  communities  which  represent  the  coming  to- 
gether of  those  who  feel  that  somewhere  at  the 
centre  of  their  lives  there  is  common  experience 
expressed  in  more  or  less  common  intellectual 
phraseology,  and  manifesting  itself  in  more  or  less 
common  codes  of  conduct. 

Thus  Christianity  is  not  only  religion,  it  is  also 
theological,  ethical,  and  institutional  life.  The 
suggestion  that  Christianity  is  at  the  cross  roads 
implies  the  indictment  that  there  is  a  danger  that 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  3 

its  theology  is  not  taking  sufficient  note  of  the 
growth  of  knowledge  and  the  changing  attitude 
of  thinking  men  to  the  problems  of  thought,  so 
that  it  is  becoming  the  repetition  of  shibboleths 
rather  than  the  expression  of  experience.  It 
implies  that  the  moral  code  which  is  traditionally 
Christian  needs  expansion  and  revision  because 
it  has  not  taken  sufficient  note  of  the  change  of 
requirement  due  to  the  passing  of  the  storm-centre 
of  the  modern  world  from  individual  to  social 
problems.  Finally  it  implies  that  there  is  a  danger 
lest,  partly  from  timidity,  partly  from  the  more 
honourable  motives  of  reverence  for  the  customs 
of  our  forefathers,  we  should  sacrifice  the  cause 
for  which  the  Christian  Church  was  founded  in 
order  to  perpetuate  the  accidents  of  its  con- 
stitution. 

With  this  indictment  I  do  not  propose  to  deal 
directly — in  the  main  it  seems  to  me  to  be  true; 
but  I  desire  to  make  the  only  contribution  possible 
from  a  student  of  history  to  the  attempt  so  to 
influence  the  minds  of  the  Christians  of  to-day 
that  they  may  choose  the  right  road  and  enable  our 
children  to  plead  not  guilty  to  an  accusation  which 
we  ourselves  are  obliged  to  admit.  I  wish  to  go 
back  to  that  distant  period  when  the  Church  was 
young,  in  order  that  we  may  realize  that  then  also 


4  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

there  was  a  time  when  Christianity  was  at  the 
cross  roads,  and  may  see  the  way  in  which  our 
spiritual  forefathers  passed  successfully  through 
the  period  of  rapid  change  which  took  them  out 
of  the  comparatively  simple  life  of  Judaism  into 
the  much  more  complex  one  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
I  wish  to  emphasize  how  in  that  generation  the  way 
of  life  was  the  constant  sacrifice  of  identity  of 
expression,  in  order  to  preserve  the  unity  of 
experience  under  changed  surroundings.  The 
Church  did  not  triumph  because  it  preserved  its 
theology,  its  ethics,  or  its  institutions  unchanged, 
but  because  it  changed  them  all,  and  changed 
them  rapidly,  in  order  that  they  might  express 
more  adequately  and  more  fully  the  spiritual  life 
which  remained  the  same,  though  the  forms  with 
which  it  was  clothed  were  altering  with  extraordin- 
ary rapidity. 

First  of  all,  then,  I  propose  to  consider  the 
nature  of  that  aspect  of  Judaism  which  is  the 
immediate  background  against  which  we  have  to 
place  the  figure  of  the  historic  Jesus.  I  shall  then 
go  on  to  set  against  that  background  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  himself,  as  it  seems  to  be  revealed  by  the 
historical  criticism  of  the  gospels.  After  that  it 
will  be  necessary  to  consider  the  characteristics  of 
the  world  of  the  Roman  Empire  into  which  Chris- 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  5 

tianity  passed  and  to  notice  the  changes  in 
Christianity  brought  about  by  the  different  sur- 
roundings into  which  it  then  travelled.  Thus 
I  hope  to  sketch  the  way  in  which  this  process  of 
readjustment  produced  the  Catholic  Church,  and 
throughout  to  consider  the  legacy  which  has  come 
down  to  us  from  Christianity  as  it  passed  through 
this  period  of  rapid  change,  and  the  responsibility 
which  is  put  upon  us  of  so  treating  our  inheritance 
that  we  may  really  develop  it,  not  contenting 
ourselves  with  the  fatal  policy  of  burying  our 
"talent"  in  the  ground  in  order  to  avoid  the  risks 
of  the  market-place,  and  of  the  changes  which 
seem  so  dangerous  and  are  yet  the  necessary  and 
sole  conditions  upon  which  continued  life  is  granted 
to  men  or  to  man's  institutions. 

It  does  not,  I  hope,  require  any  lengthy  argu- 
ment to  justify  the  method  of  treatment  thus 
adopted.  It  is  obviously  impossible  to  treat  of  a 
period  in  which  events  followed  one  another  with 
such  rapidity  and  of  which  the  records  are  rela- 
tively so  imperfect  without  the  omission  of  many 
details  of  considerable  though  secondary  impor- 
tance. In  order  to  be  clear,  it  is  necessary  some- 
times to  be  summary  in  the  treatment  of  problems ; 
but  I  have  not  been  writing  so  much  for  special 
students  of  early  Christianity  as  for  that  wider 


6  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

public  which  studies  the  past  primarily  as  a  mirror 
in  which  it  may  see  the  future  approaching,  and  is 
more  interested  in  the  development  and  result  of 
streams  of  tendency  than  in  the  exact  cataloguing 
of  successive  incidents. 

What  was  the  dominating  feature  of  the  life  of 
the  Jews  which  it  is  necessary  to  comprehend  for 
the  proper  appreciation  of  the  impression  which 
Jesus  made  upon  his  hearers?  It  can  best  be 
understood  if  we  realize  that  one  of  the  most 
important  sides  of  the  story  of  the  Jews  is  a  chapter 
in  the  history  of  nationalism.  That  is  to  say,  it 
was  a  phase  of  the  struggle  which  has  gone  on 
throughout  the  course  of  civilization  between  the 
great  empires  and  the  small  nations.  The  Jew 
naturally  looked  at  this  struggle  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  small  nation,  but  we  can  probably  grasp 
it  best  if  we  first  consider  it  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  great  empires. 

If  we  go  back  some  centuries  before  Christ,  we 
find  the  Babylonian  Empire  as  the  centre  of 
civilization.  If  we  could  have  asked  an  ancient 
Babylonian  how  the  empire  was  progressing 
(though  he  would  of  course  have  expressed  it  in 
quite  a  different  manner  from  the  modern  phrase- 
ology here  attributed  to  him)  he  would,  I  take  it, 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  7 

have  said  something  like  this:  "Yes,  the  empire 
is  flourishing.  We  have  succeeded  in  extending  our 
boundaries;  we  have  succeeded  in  civilizing  a 
large  number  of  wild  and  savage  tribes;  we  have 
brought  them  into  the  empire ;  we  have  made  them 
useful  members  of  civilization. " 

If  we  had  then  gone  one  step  further,  and  asked 
him  to  tell  us  what  was  the  policy  of  his  empire, 
he  would  have  said:  "Well,  whenever  we  find  a 
small  nation  which  is  hindering  our  progress,  we 
transplant  it.  We  break  it  up  and  move  it,  a 
little  here  and  a  little  there.  We  transplant  it  so 
that  it  is  able  more  readily  to  assimilate  itself  to 
our  civilization.  The  process  is  not  always  appre- 
ciated by  the  small  nation  at  the  time,  but  it 
makes  for  the  good  of  the  world  in  general." 

That  was  the  policy  of  Babylonia,  and  if  we  look 
at  history  we  cannot  but  recognize  that  if  a  Baby- 
lonian statesman  had  spoken  in  this  way  he  would 
have  been  justified.  His  empire  was  doing  the 
work  of  the  world.  It  was  bringing  about  a  certain 
progress  of  civilization,  just  as  the  great  nations  of 
the  world  are  doing  to-day;  though  we  can  also 
understand  that  the  Jews,  and  other  small  nations 
which  were  transplanted,  looked  on  the  process 
as  mere  catastrophe,  and  as  the  tyranny  of  enemies 
whom  God  would  ultimately  destroy.     It  seems 


8  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

to  me  that  it  is  particularly  interesting  to  realize 
that,  with  one  important  difference,  the  United 
States  come  nearer  to  being  the  inheritor  of  the 
Babylonian  method  than  any  other  nation  in  the 
world.  They  are  carrying  on  what  may  be  called 
the  Babylonian  experiment,  with  the  exception 
that  the  transplantation  is  not  being  effected 
against  the  wills  of  the  small  nations,  but  at  their 
own  desire,  and  it  is  that  which,  if  we  look  at  the 
United  States  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  world 
outside,  constitutes  the  greatness  of  their  work  in 
the  world — that  they  help  to  educate  and  to  civilize 
the  failures,  or  some  of  the  failures,  of  the  old  world 
by  forming  them  into  a  new  and  great  empire. 
But,  nevertheless,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  by 
adopting  the  methods  of  Babylonia  they  become 
also  the  heirs  of  the  difficulties  which  Babylonia 
had  to  face,  and  must  beware  of  the  dangers  which 
led  to  the  ultimate  failure  of  that  experiment  in 
Babylonia,  because  it  overtaxed  its  powers,  and 
absorbed  more  foreign  elements  than  it  was  able 
properly  to  assimilate. 

If  we  now  go  on  one  step  further  in  the  history  of 
the  Jews,  again  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  great 
nations,  passing  over  the  Greek  period,  we  come  to 
the  Roman  Empire.  If  we  could  have  asked  the 
Roman  official  in  those  days  how  the  empire  was 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  9 

progressing,  he — like  the  Babylonian — would  have 
claimed  success  for  his  government.  But  if  we  had 
asked  him  what  was  the  method  of  dealing  with 
foreign  nationalities  adopted  in  the  empire  he 
would  have  said  that  the  Romans  did  not  feel  able 
to  carry  out,  and  did  not  wish  to  carry  out,  the 
Babylonian  experiment;  that  they  were  trying 
something  else,  and  were  proposing  to  preserve 
the  nations  as  they  were,  but  to  weld  them  into  a 
higher  unity  by  putting  before  their  eyes  the  higher 
concept  of  Empire  as  opposed  to  Nationality, 
making  them  look  up  to  Rome  not  so  much  as  one 
of  the  nations,  but  as  the  "common  superior  of 
nations.* ' 

Once  more,  if  we  ask  ourselves  whether  the 
Roman  was  right,  we  are  bound  to  say  that  he  was. 
He  was  really  carrying  on  the  work  of  civilization.1 
His  claims  were  just;  and,  although  his  experiment 
failed  in  the  end,  it  is  surely  interesting  to  remem- 
ber that,  just  as  the  United  States  represent  the 
Babylonian  experiment,  so  the  British  Empire  is 
the  natural  inheritor  of  the  Roman  experiment, 
because  it  is  trying  to  do  what  the  Roman  did — 
to  develop  an  organization  in  which  it  is  possible 

1  It  was  noted  by  Roman  historians  that  those  who  fought 
hardest  against  Rome  were  the  fathers  of  the  men  who  were 
most  pleased  to  call  themselves  Romans. 


io  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

for  various  nations  to  preserve  their  identity,  and 
yet  to  feel  that  there  is  a  higher  unity  of  Empire 
above  them. 

Such  was  the  attitude  of  the  great  nations  which 
once  dominated  the  world.  Now  let  us  turn 
round,  and  do  a  much  more  difficult  thing, — con- 
sider the  facts  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  small 
nation  of  the  Jews.  Instead  of  looking  at  history 
as  the  triumphal  procession  of  civilization,  they 
necessarily  regarded  it  much  more  as  the  warding 
off — and  the  not  always  complete  warding  off — 
of  a  series  of  catastrophes.  Everything  seemed  to 
be  constantly  going  wrong.  Actual  disaster  might 
be  averted,  but  by  no  possible  means  could  they 
regard  the  existing  state  of  things  as  satisfactory. 
They  had  thought  they  were  the  chosen  people; 
they  had  expected  that  dominion  and  power  should 
be  given  to  them;  and  they  were,  at  the  best, 
merely  fighting  for  a  precarious  existence,  con- 
stantly threatened  with  extinction  by  the  struggles 
of  great  nations. 

Under  the  pressure  of  that  constant  adversity,  a 
very  peculiar  type  of  thought  was  developed,  and  it 
is  this  which  is  especially  important  as  being  the 
ultimate  background  of  the  thought  of  the  first 
generation  of  Christians.  It  was  intensely  mono- 
theistic; it   believed   in  the  existence  of  the  one 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  n 

God  of  the  Jews,  and  of  him  alone.  It  was  intensely 
moral;  it  had  a  high— an  extraordinarily  high- 
code  of  ethics.  And  the  Jews  used  both  their 
monotheistic  creed  and  their  high  ethical  standards 
as  a  fence  to  protect  themselves  against  the  ag- 
gression of  foreign  nations.  Finally  they  devel- 
oped, within  the  circle  of  monotheistic  ethics,  a 
special  catastrophic  view  of  the  universe.  That  is 
to  say,  under  the  influence  of  their  national  dis- 
asters, they  came  to  regard  the  whole  course  of 
history  as  a  succession  of  great  dramatic  catas- 
trophes, and  looked  forward  with  hope  to  the 
coming  of  one  great,  final  cataclysm,  after  which 
the  tyranny  of  the  great  nations  would  be  trodden 
underfoot,  and  the  children  of  Israel  would  take 
their  place  as  the  chosen  people  of  God,  under  his 
direct  governance,  with  his  anointed  king  as  his 
representative  on  earth. 

That  catastrophic  view  of  the  universe  (which 
the  theologian  has  learned  to  call  eschatological, 
because  it  deals  with  the  Id^ota,  or  "the  last 
things")  was  the  source  of  a  whole  literature,  which 
was  produced  more  or  less  after  the  close  of  the 
canon  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  before,  or  at  the 
same  time  as,  the  rise  of  Christianity.  It  is  a 
literature  which  even  among  theologians  is  not 
yet  sufficiently  well  known,  though  the  amount 


12  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

which  we  know  now  is  enormous  as  compared  with 
what  was  known  even  fifty  years  ago,  thanks  to 
the  discoveries  of  documents  in  Egypt  and  other 
places,  and  to  the  more  scientific  editions  of  pre- 
viously known  sources. 

In  this  literature  there  was  a  constant  attempt  to 
explain  history  by  starting  from  the  beginning  of 
creation  and  stating  it,  not  in  the  terms  of  actual 
events,  but  in  the  terms  of  the  supposed  inter- 
ventions of  various  supernatural  beings,  some  of 
which  were  derived  from  Babylonian  mythology, 
so  that  we  can  trace  under  the  guise  of  the  narra- 
tive of  these  supernatural  interventions  a  series  of 
allusions  to  the  great  events  in  the  history  of  Israel. 
At  the  end,  however,  there  is  usually  given  an 
imaginative  sketch  of  one  more  great  intervention, 
this  time  entirely  in  favour  of  Israel,  which  is  to 
close  the  history  of  the  world  as  it  is  now,  and 
inaugurate  a  new  age  and  a  new  society,  in  which 
there  is  to  be  neither  enemy  of  Israel,  nor  wicked 
men,  nor  sorrow,  nor  any  that  oppresses,  nor  any 
that  suffers  wrong.  That  is  the  picture  of  the 
future  which  they  painted.  An  example  may  be 
taken  from  the  book  of  Enoch, ■  in  which  the  writer 
describes  how  he  saw  a  vision  of  the  great  day 
which  was  to  inaugurate  this  last  intervention : 

1  Enoch  xlviii.,  I. 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  13 

And  in  that  place  I  saw  the  fountain  of  righteous- 
ness, which  was  inexhaustible,  and  around  it  were 
many  fountains  of  wisdom,  and  all  the  thirsty  drank 
of  them  and  were  filled  with  wisdom,  and  their  dwell- 
ings were  with  the  righteous  and  holy  and  elect.  And 
at  that  time  the  Son  of  Man  was  named  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Lord  of  Spirits,  and  his  name  before 
the  Head  of  Days.  .  .  .  He  shall  be  a  staff  to 
the  righteous  whereon  to  stay  themselves  and 
not  fall,  and  he  shall  be  the  light  of  the  Gentiles 
and  the  hope  of  those  who  are  troubled  at  heart. 
.  .  .  And  in  those  days  shall  the  countenance 
of  the  kings  of  the  earth  be  downcast  and  the  strong 
who  possess  the  land,  because  of  the  works  of 
their  hands.  For  in  the  day  of  their  anguish  and 
affliction  they  shall  not  be  able  to  save  themselves, 
and  I  will  give  them  over  into  the  hands  of  mine 
elect.  As  straw  in  the  fire  shall  they  burn  before 
the  face  of  the  holy;  as  lead  in  the  water  shall 
they  sink  before  the  face  of  the  righteous,  and  no 
trace  of  them  shall  any  more  be  found.  .  .  . 
In  those  days  a  change  shall  take  place  for  the 
holy  and  the  elect,  and  the  light  of  days  shall  abide 
with  them,  and  in  those  days  shall  the  earth  also 
give  back  that  which  was  entrusted  to  it,  and  shall 
also  give  back  that  which  it  has  received,  and  Hell 
shall  give  back  that  which  it  owes.  In  those  days 
the  Elect  One  shall  arise,  and  he  shall  choose  the 
righteous  and  holy  from  among  them;  and  he  shall 
sit  on  my  throne,  and  his  mouth  shall  pour  forth  all  the 
secrets  of  wisdom  and  counsel,  for  the  Lord  of  Spirits 
hath  given  them  to  him,  and  hath  glorified  him,  and 
the  earth  shall  rejoice  and  the  righteous  shall  dwell 
upon  it,  and  the  elect  shall  walk  thereon. 


14  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

We  recognize  at  once  that  this  is  the  story  of  the 
hope  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  upon 
earth,  and  of  the  coming  of  the  Anointed  One,  the 
Messiah,  to  be  the  king  of  the  elect  in  that  kingdom. 
And  it  is  of  primary  importance  that  when  we  talk 
about  the  kingdom  of  God  in  early  Christianity 
and  the  idea  of  the  Messiah — which  translated  into 
Greek  is  "the  Christ"  or  into  English  is  "the 
Anointed  One" — we  should  set  them  against  the 
background  of  this  contemporary  eschatological 
thought  which  was  the  direct  outcome  of  the  strug- 
gle of  Israel  against  the  great  nations  of  the 
world,  if  we  wish  to  know  what  they  meant  to  the 
men  of  that  generation. 

It  is  very  easy  for  us  to  be  scornful  about  this 
view  of  the  universe,  and  the  eschatological  ex- 
pectation of  the  Jew.  It  is  obvious  that  it  was  ex- 
clusive, that  it  was  frequently  narrow,  and,  above 
all,  that  it  was  in  the  end  an  illusion,  because  it  has 
not  come  true.  That  is  very  easy  to  see.  What  is 
less  easy,  but  what  is  much  more  important,  is  to 
appreciate  the  great  spiritual  and  even  intellectual 
value  which  it  possessed. 

If  you  look  at  it  first  from  the  intellectual  point 
of  view,  of  course  it  is  true  that  the  eschatological 
hope  was  an  illusion;  it  was  not  going  to  happen. 
But  can  we  be  quite  sure  that  illusions  are  not  very 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  15 

often  the  source  of  progress?  Let  me  take  an 
example.  What  was  the  intention  of  Columbus 
when  he  discovered  America?  It  was  to  find  a 
way  to  India,1  and  if  he  had  not  been  under  a 
complete  illusion  as  to  the  geography  of  the  world 
he  would  not  have  troubled  to  find  what  was  then 
a  wild  and  savage  country. 

Similarly  throughout  history  the  great  men  who 
have  done  great  things  have,  as  a  rule,  been  in- 
fluenced by  illusion.  That  is  to  say,  when  they 
have  tried  to  foresee  the  future,  they  have  foreseen 
it  wrong.  Probably  no  one  does  anything  else  if 
he  tries  to  foresee  the  future  on  any  large  scale. 
But  the  man  who  helps  the  world  is  not  he  who 
is  content  to  say:  "I  cannot  foresee  the  future; 
therefore  I  will  keep  my  eyes  fixed  rigidly  upon  the 
present,* '  but  he  who  allows  himself  to  dream 
dreams  and  to  see  visions,  although  he  knows  that 
they  are,  from  the  necessity  of  the  case,  of  the 
nature  of  illusions,  because  his  intuition  gives  him 
the  higher  wisdom  which  teaches  that  it  is  just 
that  sort  of  illusion,  that  sort  of  vision,  which  has 
always  been  the  driving  power  in  the  history  of 
civilization.     Men  find  out  quickly  enough  that 

1  Not  only  was  this  his  intention,  but  he  seems  to  have  died  in 
the  belief  that  he  really  had  done  so.  Columbus  never  knew  what 
he  gave  to  the  world. 


16  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  dream  is  but  a  dream,  and  that  the  vision  is  an 
illusion;  they  soon  go  back  to  things  as  they  are. 
But  they  remember  the  vision  which  they  have 
seen,  and  it  becomes  the  incentive  which  helps 
them  to  make  the  world  approach,  if  it  be  but  by  a 
little,  somewhat  more  closely  to  the  vision  of  that 
better  world  which  they  have  seen. 

For  this  reason  then  it  was  a  good  thing  for  the 
world  as  a  whole  that  there  should  be  a  little  nation 
which  was  under  an  illusion  as  to  the  course  of 
history,  but  which  was,  nevertheless,  able  to  be- 
queath to  succeeding  generations  a  vision  of  life 
as  it  never  has  been  and  never  will  be  on  this  earth, 
in  order  that  that  vision  should  become  the  ideal 
which  has  animated,  stimulated,  and  guided  cen- 
turies of  Christian  endeavour. 

Or  again,  still  remaining  at  the  intellectual  point 
of  view,  of  course  the  eschatological  expectation 
is  wrong,  as  a  prognostication  of  the  future;  it 
supplies,  however,  the  antidote  to  some  of  the 
things  which  we  exaggerate  in  our  generation.  We 
are  constantly  told  that  history  is  the  history  of 
human  progress,  and  in  the  end  that  is  no  doubt 
true,  but  nevertheless  I  venture  to  believe  that 
many  of  us  carry  that  sort  of  thing  to  quite  a 
ridiculous  point,  always  picturing  history  as  a 
steady  process,  and  forgetting  that,  if  we  look  at 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  17 

history  from  a  national  point  of  view,  the  Jew 
was  perfectly  right  when  he  said  it  was  a  catas- 
trophic process,  even  though  he  was  wrong  in  the 
way  in  which  he  pictured  the  supernatural  man- 
ipulation of  these  catastrophes.  Our  generation 
would  do  well  to  remember  that  the  lesson  of 
history  is  not  that  nations  constantly  go  on  in  a 
steady  line  of  progress;  it  is  rather  that  there  are 
sudden  periods  of  florescence,  when  enormous  pro- 
gress is  very  rapidly  made;  and  then  a  period  in 
which  life  stays  on  a  level.  Then,  again,  when 
men  become  greedy  and  lazy,  there  comes  a  sudden 
fall — a  catastrophe — when  the  rubbish  and  rank 
luxuriance  of  civilization  is  torn  up  and  destroyed, 
in  order  to  leave  the  ground  clear  for  a  new  harvest. 
That  was  a  truth  that  the  Jew  knew  perfectly  well, 
and  I  am  not  sure  that  we  always  do. x 

But  it  is  not  only  on  the  intellectual  side  that 
this  catastrophic  view  of  history,  the  eschatological 
expectation,  was  justified,  not  by  its  accuracy, 
but  by  its  influence  on  the  minds  of  those  who  held 
it.  If  we  turn  to  the  side  of  spiritual  life  we  find 
that  this  expectation  of  catastrophe  was  one  of  the 
things  which  so  often  took  the  Jew  out  of  the 
littlenesses  of  life,  and  made  him  feel  that,  after 

1  This  was  written  in  19 13.  Few  of  us  thought  then  how  near 
the  catastrophe  might  be. 


1 8  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

all,  the  important  things  in  the  world  are  not 
merely  those  of  relation,  but  that  there  are  certain 
absolute  values  which  we  have  with  us  now,  and 
shall  take  with  us,  even  if  we  go  hence — so  long  as 
we  are  "we"  at  all. 

It  was  in  that  way  that  the  Jews  became  the 
greatest  contributors  in  history  to  the  feeling  that, 
besides  the  duty  which  a  man  has  to  the  society  to 
which  he  belongs,  there  is  also  a  duty  which  he 
owes,  as  it  were,  to  his  own  soul,  calling  on  him  so 
to  live  that  he  is  not  entirely  dependent  at  the 
last  upon  his  relationship  to  any  particular  group 
of  men,  or  to  any  special  institution;  so  that  his 
soul  has  a  real  life  of  its  own,  apart  from  its 
relationship. 

This  is  illustrated  again  and  again  in  the  apoca- 
lyptic literature  of  the  Jews,  often  coming  as  a 
refreshing  subject,  when  we  are  beginning  to  get 
tired  of  the  constant  cycle  of  supernatural  mytho- 
logical imagery.  Baruch,  for  instance,  warns  his 
hearers  of  the  necessities  laid  upon  them  by  this 
view  of  life1: 

Before  therefore  judgment  exact  its  own, 
And  truth  demand  that  which  is  due, 

1  2  Baruch  lxxxv.  (I  have  slightly  altered  the  wording  of  the 
last  paragraph,  so  as  to  avoid  a  certain  roughness  of  expression, 
but  the  meaning  has  not  been  changed.) 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  19 

Let  us  prepare  our  soul, 

That  we  may  have  hope,  and  be  not  put  to  shame, 

That  we  may  rest  with  our  Fathers,  and  be  not 
punished  with  our  foes. 

For  the  youth  of  the  world  is  past,  and  the  strength 
of  creation  is  exhausted, 

And  the  coming  of  the  time  is  at  hand, 

And  the  ship  is  nigh  unto  the  harbour,  and  the  pilgrim 
reaches  the  city, 

And  life  is  close  unto  its  end. 

So  then  prepare  your  souls,  that, 

When  you  rise  up,  and  leave  the  ship  of  your  pilgrim- 
age, 

You  may  rest,  and  pass  not  into  condemnation. 

Is  the  feeling  not  justifiable  that  the  view  of  life 
which  could  make  a  man  write  this  is  not  a  thing 
which  we  can  throw  on  one  side  and  say  that  it  is 
merely  apocalyptic  illusion?  As  an  expectation 
of  the  future  it  was  mistaken,  but  as  an  insight 
into  the  reality  of  life  it  was  true. 

Let  me  now  pass  on  to  one  more  important  detail 
in  the  Jewish  thought,  connected  with  their  eschato- 
logical  hope.  Supposing  we  believed,  as  the  Jews 
did  in  those  days,  that  the  last  great  supernatural 
intervention  was  at  hand,  that  the  kingdom  of 
God  was  coming,  wThat  question  should  we  ask? 
Probably  we  should  say:  "What  can  we  do  to 
hasten  the  coming  of  that  kingdom?"  That  is 
exactly  what  the  Jews  in  their  generation  did  ask. 


20  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

They  considered  again  and  again  what  was  the 
right  policy  for  them  to  adopt  in  order  to  bring 
about  this  last  intervention  which  they  so  much 
desired. 

The  first,  perhaps  the  most  influential  and 
important,  answer  was  that  of  the  Scribes,  the 
students  of  the  law.  They  said:  "Keep  the  law. 
Observe  it  down  to  the  last  letter.  Live  with 
meticulous  accuracy  according  to  its  every  pre- 
cept. If  ever  the  day  come  when  the  whole  of 
the  law  is  observed,  then  the  kingdom  will  come. 
It  is  the  sins  of  Israel — its  transgressions  of  the 
law — which  are  delaying  the  coming  of  the  king- 
dom. Therefore,  keep  the  law.  That  is  what  is 
necessary!" 

But  there  was  another  party  among  the  Jews 
who  said:  "Not  so.  We  know  that  before  the 
kingdom  can  come  there  will  be  a  great  war;  there 
will  be  rebellions;  there  will  be  disasters.  The 
horrors  of  that  last  time  will  eclipse  everything 
which  we  have  yet  suffered.  We  have  it  in  our  own 
hands.  If  we  provoke  war,  and  all  its  horrors,  by 
action,  or  rebellion  against  the  enemies  of  Israel, 
then  we  shall  bring  about  the  condition  of  things 
which  will  mark  the  last  days,  and  as  a  reward  for 
our  faith,  God  will  intervene  at  the  last  moment, 
when  all  seems  lost,  and  will  miraculously  destroy 


Apocalyptic  Judaism  21 

our  enemies.      Therefore  fight  against   the  evil 
ones;  resist  the  enemy;  rebel;  destroy.' ' 

That  was  the  policy  of  the  party  called  the 
Zealots.1  You  will  understand  that  they  were 
looked  upon  with  especial  disfavour  by  the  Roman 
authorities.  But  for  us  their  significance  is  that 
they  are  a  very  important  part  of  the  background 
against  which  we  have  to  set  the  teaching  of  the 
gospels,  and  that  they  are  often  overlooked. 
Pharisees  we  know,  and  Sadducees  we  know — or 
think  we  do — but  Zealots  we  neglect,  because  they 
are  not  often  mentioned  by  name  in  the  gospels. 
Yet  that  is  not  really  strange  when  we  realize  that 
from  their  attitude  to  the  Romans  they  necessarily 
could  play  no  part  in  the  final  tragedy  in  Jerusalem. 
Nevertheless  they  were  certainly  a  power  in  Juda- 
ism, and  in  the  next  chapter  the  suggestion  will  be 
made  that  there  is  not  a  little  anti-Zealotic  polemic 
in  the  gospels. 

1  An  especially  interesting  account  is  given  by  H.  Windisch  in 
Der  messianische  Krieg. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  AND  THE  BACKGROUND  OF 
APOCALYPTIC  JUDAISM 

The  Sources — The  Fourth  Gospel — The  Synoptic  Question — The 
Gospel  of  the  Kingdom — Repentance — Scribes,  Publicans, 
and  Sinners — The  Sabbath — Zealots — World-renunciation — 
Hostility  of  the  Priests — Jesus'  Expectation  of  Death — 
Jesus'  own  View  of  Himself — "Messias  Geheimniss" — The 
Son  of  Man — Criticism  and  Faith. 

IN  the  last  chapter  an  attempt  was  made  to 
describe  the  most  important  features  of  the 
background  of  Jewish  thought,  against  which 
the  figure  of  the  historic  Jesus  must  be  placed. 

It  is,  however,  first  of  all  necessary  to  ask  what 
are  the  sources  from  which  this  figure  can  be  recon- 
structed, because  it  is  here  that  the  real  difference 
can  be  found  between  the  standpoint  of  the  present 
time  and  of  fifty  years  ago. 

If  any  one  had  been  trying  in  those  days  to  study 
the  choice  of  sources  to  be  consulted  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  life  of  Jesus,  he  would  have  cer- 
tainly taken  the  four  gospels,  and  have  treated 
them  as  a  more  or  less  co-ordinated  whole.    That 

22 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  23 

is  to  say,  he  would  have  assumed  all  four  of  them 
to  have  the  same,  or  almost  the  same,  value  as 
historic  evidence ;  and  would  have  placed  them  in 
his  mind,  as  it  were,  side  by  side. 

Since  then  we  have  passed  through  a  double  re- 
volution of  thought,  generally  known  by  the  title — 
I  was  almost  going  to  say  by  the  opprobrious  title 
—of  higher  criticism. 

It  is  called  "higher  criticism, "  not  from  any  at- 
tempt to  claim  for  it  any  superior  rank  or  value, 
but  simply  in  allusion  to  a  metaphor  which  com- 
pared this  sort  of  criticism  to  the  attempt  of  the 
explorer  who  is  working  his  way  up  some  great 
river,  and  is  trying  to  go  higher  up  towards  the 
sources.  This  is  all  that  the  word  means:  but  it 
has  suffered  from  the  insinuations  of  obscurantists 
who  have  found  the  application  of  adjectives  an 
easier  form  of  controversy  than  the  refutation  of 
arguments. 

The  result  of  this  kind  of  study  has  been  that  in 
the  first  place,  students  of  early  Christianity  have 
seen  for  some  time  that  they  cannot  place  the  four 
gospels  side  by  side  in  the  old  manner.  There  has 
been  a  long  critical  argument,  resulting  in  the 
recognition  that  the  fourth  gospel,  the  gospel  of 
St.  John,  clearly  belongs  to  a  later  period,  and 
that  the  writer  does  not  give  the  facts  as  they 


24  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

happened,  but  reinterpreted,  rewritten,  and  recon- 
sidered in  the  light  of  one  or  two  generations  of 
thought  and  experience,  so  that  it  is  for  the  his- 
torian of  less  value  than  the  first  three  gospels.  * 

The  discovery  of  this  was  the  first  revolution. 
The  second  came,  almost  within  my  own  memory, 
at  all  events  in  England,  when  students  began  to 
realize  that  we  could  not  even  put  the  first  three 
gospels  side  by  side;  to  see  that  even  here  we 
have  not  the  ultimate  sources  from  which  we 
can  reconstruct  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  that  it 
is  possible  to  go  behind  the  text,  and  reconstruct 
some  at  least  of  the  traditions  upon  which  it  is 
based. 

To  come  to  the  result  without  giving  the  very 
long  history  of  the  investigation,  the  end  was  that 
critics  in  almost  every  country  came  to  two  con- 
clusions : 

(i)  Behind  the  first  three  gospels  is  a  docu- 
ment which  is  almost,  if  not  entirely,  identical 
with  our  gospel  of  Mark,  so  that  in  the  passages 
in  which  we  have  the  same  story  in  Matthew, 
Mark,  and  Luke,  Mark  must  in  the  main  be  taken 

1  That  is  to  say,  for  the  historian  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  But  for 
the  history  of  Christianity  the  situation  is  reversed.  The 
Catholic  Church  is  not  merely  founded  on  the  facts  as  they  hap- 
pened, but  even  more  on  the  interpretation  of  the  facts — in  other 
words,  on  the  gospel  of  St.  John,  rather  than  on  the  synoptics. 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  25 

as  the  original,  and  the  other  two  gospels  as  the 
earliest  commentaries  on  Mark. 

(2)  Behind  Matthew  and  Luke,  in  passages 
where  they  do  not  cover  the  same  ground  as 
Mark,  there  is  also  a  common  source  which  is 
very  early. 

This  source  is  generally  known  as  Q,  because  the 
German  scholars  who  first  drew  attention  to  it 
called  it  Q(uelle  =  source),  in  order  not  to  beg  the 
question  by  giving  it  some  more  definite  name. 1 

No  serious  critics  suggest  that  Q  and  Mark  repre- 
sent the  whole  truth,  but  they  do  say  very  em- 
phatically that  the  historian  must  begin  with  these 
two  documents,  Mark  and  Q,  and  treat  them  as 
the  earliest  and  best  authorities  for  any  attempt 
to  reconstruct  the  life  of  Jesus. 

According  then  to  these  narratives  we  find  that 
Jesus  is  represented  first  of  all  as  having  been 

1  It  should  however  be  noted  that  there  is  often  a  tendency  to 
treat  Q  as  if  we  knew  all  about  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  only- 
know  that  certain  sections  of  Matthew  and  Luke  are  mutually 
dependent  on  a  common  original:  it  is  convenient  to  call  this  Q, 
but  we  do  not  know  whether  this  Q  is  always  the  same  document, 
or  whether  many  or  few  sections  in  Matthew  or  Luke,  with  no 
parallels,  do  not  come  really  from  Q.  Moreover  the  recon- 
structions of  Q  are — except  in  a  few  points  where  editorial  touches 
are  obvious — either  works  of  the  imagination  or,  still  worse,  un- 
intelligent compilations  which  try  to  conceal  their  mechanical 
nature  by  a  claim  to  being  objective. 


26  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

baptized  by  John  the  Baptist.  At  that  moment 
he  experienced  the  vision  of  the  heavens  being 
opened,  and  heard  a  voice  from  heaven  saying 
that  God  recognized  him  as  his  son.  Then,  after 
a  period  in  the  wilderness,  he  began  preaching  in 
the  synagogues  in  Galilee,  and  here  we  come  to 
the  first  serious  question:  What  did  he  preach? 
We  may  be  quite  sure  that  any  writer  will  put 
into  the  foreground  the  message  which  he  regards 
as  central,  and  it  is  therefore  very  important  to 
notice  that  at  the  very  beginning  Mark  tells  us 
that  the  message  was:  "The  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  at  hand;  repent!" 

If  we  remember  the  background  of  Judaism, 
that  can  only  have  meant  to  his  audience  that  the 
last  great  catastrophe  was  at  hand,  when  the 
Messiah  would  come  and  intervene  on  behalf  of 
the  Elect — therefore,  repent !  It  implies  the  same 
background  of  thought  as  Enoch,  and  the  same 
message  as  Baruch's:  "  Therefore,  prepare  your 
souls!" 

Continuing  the  narrative  we  find  that,  shortly 
after  this,  there  was  a  quarrel  between  Jesus  and 
the  rulers  of  the  synagogue,  and  he  went  out  to 
preach  on  the  hillside  by  the  shore  of  the  sea. 
From  that  moment  Jesus  was  outside  the  syna- 
gogue.    He  was  now  beginning  his  own  organiza- 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  27 

tion,  and  we  may  really  say  that  this  is  the  moment 
when  the  Church  began  to  exist.1 

We  then  find  a  long  period — at  least  long  if  we 
reckon  by  months, — the  period  of  preaching  in 
Galilee,  and  the  growing  conviction  that,  though 
the  kingdom  is  at  hand,  more  and  more  stress  must 
be  put  upon  the  old  belief  that  the  last  days  before 
the  coming  of  the  kingdom  will  be  terrible,  and 
full  of  suffering.  Finally  there  is  a  visit  to  Jeru- 
salem, with  the  same  message  illustrated,  according 
to  Mark,  by  a  long  discourse  emphasizing  the  hor- 
rors which  are  to  come  at  the  last  day,  and  then  the 
betrayal  and  crucifixion.  There  we  reach  the  end 
of  the  ministry  of  the  historic  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
on  earth.  With  the  story  of  the  resurrection 
which  follows  there  comes  a  new  chapter,  a  chapter 
which  deals  with  the  history  of  the  community 
which  remained. 

It  has  been  possible  to  pass  very  quickly  over 
this  account  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  because  its  details 
are  so  generally  familiar.  But  it  is  very  desirable 
to  reiterate  how  much  there  is  in  the  oldest  strata 
of  the  gospel  which  really  bears  out  the  contention 
that  the  preaching  of  Jesus  at  this  period,  with 
regard  to  the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  was  homo- 
geneous with  the  type  of  Jewish  teaching  in  the 

1  Cf.  F.  C.  Burkitt,  Transmission  of  the  Gospel  Narrative. 


28  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

last  chapter.  We  are  too  apt  to  explain  things 
away.  We  do  not  give  their  full  significance  to 
passages  such  as  that  in  which  Jesus  says:  " There 
are  those  who  stand  here  who  shall  not  taste  of 
death  until  they  see  the  kingdom  of  God  come 
in  power/ '  Or  again:  "This  generation  shall 
not  pass  away  until  all  these  things  are  fulfilled." 
The  world  of  ideas  to  which  these  passages  belong 
is  the  same  as  that  of  Enoch.  Or  again,  emphasiz- 
ing that,  although  this  was  true,  yet  no  man  knew 
the  exact  moment  of  the  coming,  "concerning  that 
day  or  hour  knoweth  no  man  save  the  Father; 
watch,  for  ye  know  not  when  the  time  is."  We 
are  reminded  at  once  of  Baruch's:  "Prepare  ye 
your  souls !  The  time  is  at  hand. "  It  is  the  same 
spirit,  and  without  realizing  that  this  sort  of 
teaching  was  not  something  new,  but  brought  with 
it  a  whole  series  of  associated  ideas  well  known  to 
the  Jews,  it  is  impossible  to  understand  what  sort 
of  impression  the  preaching  of  Jesus  must  have 
made  upon  his  contemporaries. 

The  condition  which  Jesus  laid  down  for  en- 
trance into  the  kingdom  was  in  principle  not 
unacceptable  to  the  Scribes.  He  demanded  repent- 
ance, and  to  a  Jew  this  could  only  mean  one  thing: 
"Turn  round  and  change  your  mode  of  life;  alter 
your  evil  ways ;  walk  in  the  path  of  righteousness ; 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  29 

lest  when  the  day  comes,  and  the  kingdom  is  here, 
you  may  be  left  outside." 

That  is  teaching  which  any  Scribe  would  in 
principle  have  accepted :  but  its  development  made 
manifest  certain  important  differences.  The  call  to 
repentance  is  expanded  in  various  places  in  Mark 
and,  at  much  greater  length,  in  the  document 
which  we  call  Q,  especially  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  If  we  try  to  place  the  general  result  of 
these  expansions  against  the  background  of 
contemporary  thought,  we  find  that  it  partially 
accepted  a  great  part  of  the  teaching  of  the  Scribes, 
who  took  the  view  that  if  men  observed  the  law 
they  would  be  able  to  enter  the  kingdom,  but  it 
went  beyond  it.  It  said:  " Observe  the  law" — 
as  the  Scribes  did — but  it  added  to  the  law  by 
making  it  something  which  dealt  not  merely  with 
the  code  of  outward  conduct,  but  also  with  the 
intention  of  the  heart;  supplementing,  rather 
than  rejecting,  the  teaching  of  the  Scribes  it  said : 
11  Except  your  righteousness  exceed  that  of  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. "  » 

The  full  message  of  Jesus  is  given  in  epitome  in 
the  primitive  account  in  Mark:  "The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand;  repent,  and  believe  the  good 
news."     Its  centre,   so  far  as  controversy  was 


30  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

concerned,  was  "repent,"  but,  by  a  curious  mis- 
understanding, Christians  have  often  read  into 
"believe  the  good  news"  all  the  implications  of  the 
later  Pauline  or  even  Lutheran  theology,  and  by 
translating  the  Greek  by  "gospel"  instead  of  by 
"good  news"  have  entirely  changed  its  meaning. 
The  original  signification  of  "good  news"  here 
was  the  announcement  which  had  just  been  made 
— the  coming  of  the  kingdom.  The  "faith "  which 
Jesus  asked  for  was  faith  in  the  truth  of  his  mes- 
sage. It  is  not  faith  in  him  as  Messiah  which  is 
required;  that  was  the  "good  news"  which  the 
Christian  missionaries  preached,  and  therefore 
faith  to  them  often  came  to  be  almost,  if  not  quite, 
identical  with  believing  the  proposition  that  the 
Christ  is  Jesus,  and,  as  the  Jewish  connotation  of 
this  phrase  was  lost  sight  of,  this  developed  into 
the  equivalent  of  a  judgment  made  on  past  events. 
But  that  is  not  the  meaning  of  faith  in  the  synoptic 
narrative x :  it  is  always  an  attitude  of  expectancy 
as  to  the  future,  not  of  credence  in  a  certain  view 
of  the  past.  It  sometimes  refers  to  the  healing  of 
a  sick  person, 2  sometimes  to  the  forgiveness  of  sins, 

1  It  has  however  changed  its  meaning  in  the  fourth  gospel,  in 
which  it  certainly  means  a  definite  opinion  as  to  Jesus.  Here 
again  the  fourth  gospel  is  valuable  for  the  history  of  Christian 
thought  rather  than  for  the  faith  and  the  life  of  Jesus. 

2  Psychologically  this  is  important.     Faith  healing  depends  on 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  31 

but  here,  at  the  beginning  of  the  gospel,  it  has  its 
normal  meaning — the  belief  in  the  truth  of  the 
announcement  that  in  the  immediate  future  the 
kingdom  of  God  would  come. 

The  announcement  that  the  kingdom  was  at 
hand,  and  the  appeal  for  belief  in  its  truth,  was  thus 
a  message  which  was  unlikely  to  provoke  active 
opposition.  It  was,  indeed,  to  every  Jew  "good 
news"  and  even  though  many  might  be  sceptical, 
none  would  be  necessarily  hostile  to  an  assurance 
that  an  event  was  approaching  for  which  the 
prayers  of  the  pious  were  daily  offered. 

The  hostility  recorded  in  the  gospels  arose  in 
connexion  with  the  class  of  persons  to  whom  Jesus 
made  the  offer  of  entry  into  the  kingdom,  and  the 
practical  interpretation  which  he  gave  to  repent- 
ance as  the  necessary  condition  for  this  entry.  On 
these  points  the  teaching  of  Jesus  differed  sharply 
from  that  of  the  Scribes  and  the  Zealots,  and  in  the 
oldest  strata  of  the  gospels  we  can  clearly  trace  the 
existence  of  controversy  with  both. 

So  far  as  the  Scribes  were  concerned  the  teaching 

the  firm  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  patient  that  he  is  going  to 
be  cured:  any  other  belief  is  only  valuable  so  far  as  it  produces  this 
result.  It  may  be  reasonable  or  it  may  be  ridiculous,  but,  how- 
ever ridiculous,  it  is  nevertheless  valuable  if  it  helps  to  bring  a 
conviction  of  convalescence — that  is,  of  future  health — to  the 
sick  person. 


32  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

of  Jesus  as  to  the  class  of  persons  who  could  be 
admitted  to  the  kingdom  was  wholly  unacceptable. 
In  their  eyes  this  was  the  especial  privilege  of  the 
righteous  and  pious  in  Israel ;  but  Jesus  announced 
that  he  had  come  to  call  sinners.  In  the  later 
forms  of  the  text  this  is  softened  by  changing  the 
phrase  to  "call  sinners  to  repentance."  In  one 
sense,  no  doubt,  this  change  is  justified :  Jesus  did 
not  tell  sinners  to  continue  sinning,  and  neverthe- 
less offer  them  entry  into  the  kingdom.  But  it  ob- 
scures the  full  importance  of  the  message.  The 
Scribes  did  not  seriously  consider  the  possibility 
that  a  "Publican"1  or  a  "Sinner" — that  is  to  say, 
any  one  who  did  not  observe  all  the  obligations  of 
the  Scribes'  interpretation  of  the  Law — would  be 
admitted  to  the  kingdom,  nor  did  they  take  any 
special  pains  to  convert  these  despised  elements 
among  the  people.  Jesus,  on  the  other  hand, 
regarded  himself  as  having  a  special  mission  to 
these  classes,   and  offered  to   those  who  would 

1  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the  publicans  were  tax- 
collectors,  or  perhaps  more  exactly  custom-house  officers;  but  I 
prefer  to  keep  the  old  translation,  because  the  whole  point  is  that 
the  "publicans"  of  the  Roman  administration  were  a  hated  and 
despised  class;  this  connotation,  which  is  essential,  is  not  pre- 
served by  the  translation  "tax-collector, "  because,  however  much 
taxes  or  customs  may  be  disliked,  no  one — except  momentarily — 
passes  his  dislike  of  them  on  to  the  tax-collector,  or  custom-house 
officer. 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  33 

follow  him  in  his  mission  of  preaching  and  pre- 
paration the  certainty  of  entry  into  the  kingdom. 
It  should  be  noted  that  this  fact  is  sometimes 
exaggerated:  Jesus  did  not  say  that  only  those 
who  followed  him  would  be  admitted,  and  he  did 
not  deny  the  existence  of  "righteous"  in  Israel,  to 
whom  he  was  not  sent,  who  needed  no  physician. x 
The  claim  to  have  the  exclusive  right  of  entry  to 
the  kingdom  of  heaven — the  essence  of  ecclesiasti- 
cism  in  the  bad  sense  of  the  word — was  perhaps 
made  by  the  Scribes,  or  at  least  by  some  of  them, 
but  not  by  Jesus,  though  Christians  have  in  this 
respect  not  always  followed  his  example. 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
was  in  agreement  with,  and  even  went  beyond, 
that  of  the  Scribes.  Therefore  just  as  later  on  in 
the  Rabbinical  writings  many  passages  were  an- 
imated by  what  we  have  come — not  quite  fairly — 
to  regard2  as  a  specifically  Christian  spirit,  there 
were,  in  the  time  of  Jesus,  undoubtedly  many  among 

1 1  cannot  see  that  we  have  the  least  reason  to  suppose  that 
Jesus  was  ironical  when  he  spoke  in  this  way. 

2  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  a  great  Talmudist  to  realize  that 
Christian  theologians  have  for  centuries  been  unfair  to  Rabbinical 
Judaism.  I  may  perhaps  be  allowed  to  commend  to  the  serious 
attention  of  those  who  desire  to  hear  the  Jewish  side  stated  with 
fairness  and  learning,  and  by  no  means  unsympathetically  to 
Christianity,  Mr.  C.  Montefiore's  Judaism  and  St.  Paul,  and  his 
The  Synoptic  Gospels. 


34  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  Jews  who  heard  him  gladly  and  accepted  his 
teaching.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  agreement 
was  eclipsed  by  the  fact  that  his  teaching  was 
obnoxious  and  roused  hostility  because  it  opened 
the  door  of  hope  to  a  despised  and  hated  class. 

Moreover,  serious  friction  arose,  because  whereas 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  went  beyond  that  of  the 
Pharisees  in  the  intensive  value  attached  to  the 
law,  as  claiming  the  obedience  of  desires  and  wishes 
as  well  as  of  actions,  he  refused  to  go  as  far  in  the 
extent  of  the  control  which  it  demanded  over  con- 
duct. Jesus  put  on  one  side  the  Sabbath  law  and 
the  ceremonial  law.  He  regarded  with  abhorrence 
the  meticulous  care  which  the  Scribes  devoted  to 
indifferent  actions.  It  was  on  this  point  that 
collisions  most  often  arose,  and  heated  controversy 
ensued.  The  synoptic  narratives  are  full  of  this 
controversy,  largely  because  it  was  continued  in 
a  modified  form  by  the  apostles,  and  therefore 
appealed  to  the  present  as  well  as  to  the  historic 
interest  of  the  writers  of  the  gospels. x 

1  It  is  again  worth  noting  how  far  the  writer  of  the  fourth  gospel 
departs  from  the  facts,  and  rewrites  them  in  the  light  of  the 
controversy  of  his  own  time.  The  discussion  with  the  Jews  re- 
mains; but  it  is  scarcely  at  all  concerned  with  the  observance  of 
the  law.  The  question  discussed  is  the  nature  and  functions  of 
Jesus,  which  had,  of  course,  become  the  burning  point  of  dispute 
between  Christians  and  Jews  a  generation  after  his  death,  but  was 
scarcely  discussed  at  all  during  his  life.     In  this  instance,  too,  the 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  35 

The  polemic  against  the  Pharisees  and  Scribes 
in  the  gospels  has  always  been  recognized:  but 
that  against  the  Zealots  is  quite  as  important,  and 
has  unfortunately  been  often  overlooked. x  Much  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  becomes  intelligible  only  when 
we  place  it  in  contrast  to  that  of  the  Zealots.  He 
demanded  that  men  should  believe  that  the  king- 
dom would  come,  not  because  of  their  fighting, 
but  because  of  their  suffering.  "  In  your  suffering 
— your  patient  endurance — shall  you  win  your 
lives  " ;  "  he  that  suffers  to  the  end  shall  be  saved  " ; 
"resist  not  evil"  and  similar  passages  seem  to 
be  clearly  directed  against  the  exactly  opposite 
Zealot  teaching. 

The  positive  side  of  this  teaching  is  carried  still 
further.  It  calls  upon  men  to  give  up  all  their 
possessions,  to  abandon  their  wealth,  to  cut  them- 
selves loose  from  the  ties  of  family ;  it  excludes  the 
rich  from  the  kingdom — at  least,  that  seems  to  be 
the  plain  meaning — and  it  calls  on  men  to  follow 
one  who  has  not  where  to  lay  his  head.     It  is  the 

synoptic  narrative  justifies  its  historical  nature.  Second-century 
Christianity  would  never  have  invented  a  story  concerned  only 
with  a  controversy  which,  even  if  it  still  existed,  was  no  longer  the 
main  issue. 

1  Honourable  exception  must  be  made  ot  H.  Windisch:  Der 
messiamsche  Krieg  und  das  Unhristentum,  and  K.  F.  Proost: 
De  Bergrede,  hare  herkomst  en  strekking  (The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  its  Origin  and  Tendencies). 


36  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

extremest  negation  of  all  possible  kinds  of  what 
we  call  social  values.  It  is  a  call  to  men  to  set 
themselves  free  of  everything  that  ties  them  down 
and  binds  them  to  society  as  it  is.  I  submit  that 
it  is  only  intelligible  if  you  understand  that  it 
comes  from  a  circle  which  believed  that  society  in 
its  existing  form  was  doomed,  and  that  those 
would  have  the  best  chance — the  only  chance, 
indeed — of  entering  into  the  coming  age,  the  new 
society,  the  kingdom  of  God,  who  were  not  tied 
down  and  smothered  by  that  which  was  so  soon 
to  perish. 

After  all,  if  we  were  quite  certain  that  this  world 
was  going  to  cease  to  exist  in  a  few  months,  we 
should  not  take  any  interest  in  social  conditions  or 
politics,  or  even  in  the  smaller  problems  of  private 
life ;  nor  would  it  be  rational  for  us  to  do  so.  The 
reason  why  it  is  rational  for  us  to  do  these  things, 
and  is  wrong  for  us  not  to  take  a  lively  interest  in 
them,  is  because  we  are  as  firmly  assured  that 
society  is  going  to  continue  as  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  were  convinced  that  it  was  coming  to  an  end. 

But  if  this  view  of  the  gospels  be  correct  do  we 
not  reduce  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  to  some- 
thing which  is  negligible,  because  it  was  based  on 
a  complete  misconception  of  what  was  going  to 
happen?     On  the  contrary,  for  that  very  reason 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  37 

it  was  able  to  put  certain  values  of  the  greatest 
possible  importance  into  clear  light,  and  it  could 
have  done  so  in  no  other  way.  It  cut  out  the 
social  values.  That  is  true,  but  an  illustration 
will  serve  to  show  the  gain  of  this  omission.  Those 
who  have  ever  studied  photography  know  that 
usually  they  are  dealing  with  plates  which  are  too 
sensitive  to  blue  and  insufficiently  sensitive  to 
yellow  light,  so  that  difficulties  arise  if  they  want 
to  photograph  something  which  contains  a  great 
deal  of  yellow.  They  therefore  use  a  screen  of 
yellow  glass,  which  cuts  out  the  other  rays  of  light, 
so  that  they  obtain  artificially  a  world  in  which 
there  is  little  except  yellow  light,  and  thus  overcome 
the  limitations  of  their  plates.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  this  illustration  our  minds  are  photographic 
plates  which  are  too  sensitive  to  certain  social 
values,  and  not  sensitive  enough  to  certain  spiritual 
values ;  and  I  believe  that  the  eschatological  point 
of  view  of  the  Jews  and  of  Jesus  has  served  as  the 
yellow  screen  which  has  enabled  us  to  overcome 
this  lack  of  proportion. 

Broadly  speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  there  are 
two  aspects  of  ethical  teaching.  The  first  is  that 
with  which  in  modern  times  we  are  so  familiar,  the 
teaching  which  says  that  the  first  thing  a  man  has 
to  do  is  to  be  a  good  citizen.     This  is  the  world- 


38  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

affirming  ethic  which  says  that  this  world  as  we 
have  it  is  God's  world.  That  is  a  perfectly  true 
statement :  We  are  put  here  to  work,  and  if  we 
scorn  society,  and  do  not  do  our  fair  share,  we  are 
shirking  the  responsibility  which  has  been  put 
upon  our  shoulders.  Therefore  it  is  our  duty  to 
take  part  in  all  such  things  as  social,  political,  and 
national  duties  (which  may  not  appeal  to  us  very 
much  in  themselves),  because  they  are  the  things 
which  we  are  put  here  to  do. 

But  there  is  also  another  kind  of  ethical  teach- 
ing— the  teaching  which  denies  the  world;  which 
says  that  these  social  and  national  claims  are 
doubtless  valid,  but  there  is  something  beyond 
them  all,  and  a  man  is  more  than  a  good  citizen. 
There  are  times  when  he  has  the  right  and  the  duty 
not  to  be  hurrying  about,  and  busily  doing  some- 
thing, but  rather  to  go  aside  and  think  about  the 
meaning  of  life.  There  come  times  when  he  will 
not  even  be  able  to  do  his  work  in  the  world  prop- 
erly, if  he  do  not  throw  aside  the  world  alto- 
gether for  a  moment,  and  stand  apart  from  the 
hurry  and  toil  of  life  as  it  is  now,  to  ask  himself 
what  he  will  do  in  the  end  thereof.  This  is  the 
world-renouncing1  ethic  which  says  that,  although 

1  It  is  not  quite  clear  to  me  whether  "world-renouncing"  is  really 
the  best  possible  expression  for  what  is  intended.     In  some  ways 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  39 

many  possessions  and  wide  interests  enable  a  man 
not  only  to  enjoy  life,  but  also  to  do  much  good  to 
other  people,  if  he  be  not  able  at  times  to  throw 
off  all  their  claims  he  becomes  the  slave  of  his  own 
surroundings. 

Stated  in  terms  of  modern  life,  it  reminds  us 
that  although  it  be  true  that  society,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  is  permanent,  and  that  the  world  is  not 
speedily  coming  to  an  end  by  means  of  some  dra- 
matic cataclysm,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  we 
personally  are  coming  to  an  end,  so  far  as  the 
world  or  society  is  concerned,  within  a  period 
which,  after  all,  cannot  be  so  very  long.  And, 
stated  in  the  terms  of  ancient  Jewish  life,  it  is  this 
ethic  which  is  presented  most  vividly  and  most 
strongly  in  just  those  parts  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  represent  the  teaching  of  Jesus  when 
he  and  his  hearers  were  looking  at  life  under  the 
influence  of  the  eschatological  expectation. 

The  effect  of  that  expectation  was  to  hide  almost 
entirely  the  more  obvious  duties  of  a   "world- 

"self- renouncing"  would  be  better;  but  this  also  is  not  wholly 
satisfactory,  and  therefore,  though  with  some  hesitation,  I  have 
conformed  to  the  usual  phraseology.  What  however  is  important 
is  to  distinguish  clearly  between  the  world-renunciation  or  self- 
renunciation  of  Jesus,  which  does  not  imply  any  dualistic  theory 
that  the  "world"  or  the  "self"  is  inherently  evil,  and  the  Gnostic 
doctrine  which  demanded  world-renunciation  because  it  con- 
demned the  world  as  incurably  evil. 


40  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

affirming  ethic"  in  daily  life,  but  in  the  darkness 
thus  induced  some  of  the  eternal  lights  shone  out, 
as  the  stars  during  an  eclipse.  It  is  the  fashion 
to  call  an  ethic  conditioned  by  the  eschatological 
expectation  an  "interim  ethic,"  but  though  there 
is  of  course  a  sense  in  which  the  phrase  is  correct, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  the  "interim"  element 
is  not  inherent  in  the  ethic,  but  rather  in  the  cir- 
cumstances to  which  it  is  applied.  In  a  very  real 
sense  no  ethic  is  so  truly  "interim"  as  that  which 
affirms  a  world  to  which  our  relationship  is  but 
the  transitory  and  fleeting  measure  of  earthly 
existence;  and  none  deserves  the  name  so  little 
as  that  which  emphasizes  man's  ephemeral  nature, 
even  though  it  form  an  inaccurate  image  of  the 
method  of  his  passing  away. 

Of  course  there  are  other  views  as  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  gospels.  For  instance  there  are 
critics  who  maintain  that  all  the  eschatological 
teaching  is  a  later  addition  to  the  gospel.  They 
cut  it  out  by  the  somewhat  free  use  of  the  critical 
knife.  But  I  do  not  think  that  they  are  successful 
in  explaining  its  origin.  If  it  be  not  genuine,  who 
invented  it?  Can  they  seriously  ascribe  it  to  a 
later  generation,  living  when  the  expectation  of 
the  coming  of  the  kingdom  had  been  shown  by 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  41 

the  event  to  be  illusory?  Moreover  they  nearly 
always  explain  away  the  world-renouncing 
teaching. 

But  by  this  sort  of  interpretation  they  are 
surely  not  giving  us  what  the  historic  Jesus  really 
said  in  all  its  strength  and  vividness.  They  are 
giving  us  a  mixture  of  what  he  said  toned  down 
by  what  they  feel  to  be  the  claims  of  the  world- 
accepting  ethics  which  are  necessary  for  modern 
society.  And  the  tragedy,  to  my  mind,  is  that 
they  give  us  something  which  is  neither  very  good 
world-accepting  ethic  nor  very  good  world-renounc- 
ing ethic.  They  bring  it  all  down  to  a  common- 
place level,  and,  by  cutting  out  the  eschatological 
element  from  the  gospels,  they  not  only  make 
Jesus  into  some  one  who  does  not  really  belong 
to  the  first  century,  but  also,  to  my  mind,  does 
not,  with  their  reconstruction,  really  belong  quite 
adequately  to  any  century.  Their  Jesus  is  not 
historical,  and  the  just  nemesis  is  that  they  do 
not  seem  able  to  give  an  adequate  answer  to  the 
rising  school  of  students  of  literature  in  Germany 
which  has  more  or  less  taken  their  reconstruction 
of  the  historic  Jesus,  and  has  said  that  it  is  not  an 
historic  figure  at  all,  but  a  production  of  second- 
century  Christianity.  But  this  reconstruction  of 
the  historic  Jesus  which  they  attack  is  really  the 


42  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

product  not  of  second-century  Christianity  but 
of  nineteenth-century  Liberalism. 

There  arises  here,  however,  another  difficulty. 
If  the  teaching  of  Jesus  was  the  suggested  com- 
bination of  a  Jewish  eschatological  expectation 
of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  with  a  world-re- 
nouncing ethic,  why  was  he  crucified  by  the 
Romans  at  the  instigation  of  the  high  priests? 
One  answer  which  is  sometimes  given  is  that  the 
Messianic  claim  was  deeply  resented  as  blasphe- 
mous. This  was  no  doubt  used  as  an  excuse  to 
secure  a  condemnation,  but  it  does  not  appear 
that  Jesus  ever  openly  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah : 
that  was  in  any  case  a  secret  revealed  only  to  a 
very  small  circle  of  disciples  who  were  forbidden 
to  make  it  public.  It  is  even  possible  that  this 
secret  was  what  Judas  betrayed, *  but  it  is  in  any 

1  The  betrayal  is  a  difficulty  which  is  not  at  first  felt,  and  is 
often  overlooked.  Usually  it  is  supposed  that  Judas  betrayed 
some  secret  hiding-place ;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  narrative  to 
justify  this.  What  the  priests  wanted  was  evidence  to  justify  a 
condemnation,  not  information  to  lead  to  an  arrest.  It  is  also 
probable  that  the  publication  of  the  Messianic  secret  (perhaps 
perverted,  see  p.  45)  was  the  reason  why  the  crowd  in  Jerusalem  so 
suddenly  changed  from  cries  of  "Hosanna"  to  shouts  of  "Crucify 
him."  They  gladly  welcomed  the  announcement  of  the  coming 
of  the  kingdom,  but  the  claim  to  be  Messiah,  when  the  kingdom 
was  obviously  not  yet  come,  was  regarded  as  a  blasphemous 
absurdity.     Possibly,  too,  the  choice  of  Barabbas  by  the  crowd 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  43 

case  clear  that  the  official  hostility  is  inadequately- 
explained  by  a  secret  which  had  played  no  part 
in  the  public  teaching  of  Jesus.  We  are  thus 
driven  to  look  in  a  different  direction  to  find  the 
reason  for  the  hostility  of  the  priests,  and  especially 
for  its  suddenness. 

So  far  as  we  can  see,  there  is  no  serious  contro- 
versy between  Jesus  and  the  priests,  often  iden- 
tified with  the  Sadducees,1  until  the  last  week 
in  Jerusalem.  This  is  natural:  the  priests  were 
certainly  as  much  opposed  to  the  Zealots  as  was 
Jesus,  and  they  do  not  appear  to  have  accepted 
the  Scribes'  teaching  as  to  the  law.  They  were 
probably  rich  and  somewhat  politically  minded 
ecclesiastics ;  to  have  doubted  that  the  kingdom  of 


was  a  movement  towards  Zealotism  in  preference  to  Quietism; 
but  the  problem  of  Barabbas  is  very  difficult. 

1  The  view  which  is  generally  accepted  is  that  the  Sadducees 
were  a  political  party  rather  than  a  sect,  and  that  the  priests 
mostly  belonged  to  it.  This  fact  would  be  connected  with  the 
meaning  of  Sadducee,  which  is  probably  merely  "Zadokite," 
from  Zadok,  David's  high  priest.  It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  the 
question  here,  but  I  would  wish  to  protest  that  the  whole  question 
of  the  real  nature  of  Pharisees  and  Sadducees  is  not  yet  settled. 
The  evidence  of  Josephus  is  usually  less  widely  studied  than  that 
of  Schurer,  whose  deservedly  famous  work  has  in  some  circles  been 
treated  with  more  respect  than  the  documents  on  which  it  is  based. 
There  are  instructive  articles  by  B.  D.  Eerdmans  and  H.  Oort  in 
the  Theol.  Tijdschrift,  January  and  May,  19 14,  on  the  question 
of  the  Pharisees,  and  my  friend,  Prof.  Wensink,  has  drawn  my 
attention  to  Lesaynski,  Die  Sadducaer. 


44  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

God  was  coming — ultimately — would  have  seemed 
to  them  a  dangerously  sceptical  opinion,  but  the 
interim  ethic  which  appealed  to  them  was  the 
adequate  support  of  institutions  rather  than 
the  promulgation  of  new  ideas.  That  a  Galilean 
fanatic  was  convinced  that  the  kingdom  of  God 
was  coming  immediately  might  be  disturbing  to 
the  crowd,  but  fortunately  his  teaching  that  men 
should  abandon  their  possessions  would  go  far  to 
neutralize  any  bad  results;  and  the  doctrine  that 
it  was  better  to  suffer  persecution  rather  than  rise 
in  rebellion  would  have  a  positively  beneficial 
effect  upon  minds  apt  to  be  inflamed  by  the  dan- 
gerous incitements  of  the  Zealots.  But  this  com- 
placent attitude  received  a  rude  shock  when  Jesus 
reached  Jerusalem,  and  at  once  protested  by  word 
and  action  against  the  sale  of  animals  and  the 
changing  of  money  in  the  Temple. 

We  are  apt  to  overlook  the  significance  of  this 
event;  but  it  was,  I  think,  the  immediate  cause 
of  the  crucifixion.  The  priests  were  in  possession 
of  a  commercial  monopoly:  in  practice1  no  one 
could  offer  a  sacrifice  in  the  Temple  except  by 
buying  a  victim  in  a  market  controlled  by  the 

1  In  theory  it  was  no  doubt  possible,  if  any  one  were  fortunate 
enough  to  find  a  victim  which  the  priests  would  accepc  as  without 
defect. 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  45 

priests.  No  one  could  give  money  except  in 
Jewish  coin,  to  obtain  which  he  was  obliged  to 
exchange  the  current  Roman  coinage  at  the  table 
of  the  money-exchangers — also  controlled  by  the 
priests — and  for  this  of  course  he  would  pay  a 
commission.  Thus  the  same  supply  of  Jewish 
coin  would  keep  on  an  endless  circuit,  passing 
from  the  money-changer  to  the  pious  Jew  who 
wished  to  contribute  his  offering,  from  him  to  the 
priest,  and  from  the  priest  back  to  the  money- 
changer, and  each  time  the  circle  was  completed 
there  was  a  profit  on  the  transaction. 

It  was  against  this  commercial  monopoly  that 
Jesus  protested  when  he  spoke  of  a  den  of  thieves. 
The  den  of  thieves  retaliated  by  accusing  him  of 
rebellion  against  the  Romans,  and  in  spite  of  his 
teaching  of  non-resistance  to  persecution  they 
secured  a  conviction  by  making  use  of  the  infor- 
mation that  Jesus  regarded  himself  as  the  coming 
Messiah,  who  would  reign  in  a  kingdom  which 
would  take  the  place  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

By  a  curious  but  intelligible  process  Christians 
came  in  the  next  generation  to  put  on  the  Scribes 
and  their  successors,  the  Rabbis,  the  guilt  of  the 
judicial  murder  of  Jesus.  That  is  because  the 
controversy  between  the  Christians  and  the  Jews 
was    primarily    a    matter    which    concerned    the 


46  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

Scribes.  It  centred  in  the  exposition  of  the  law, 
and  the  interpretation  of  Scripture,  especially  the 
Messianic  passages.  It  was  natural  to  connect 
the  existing  Jewish  opponents  with  the  death  of 
Jesus.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  financial  interest 
rather  than  theological  hatred  was  the  real  cause 
of  the  accusation  of  the  priests,  though  they 
dressed  it  up  in  a  partly  political,  partly  religious 
form.  I  do  not  think  that  history  gives  us  reason 
for  supposing  that  the  financial  interests  of  a 
wealthy  class  are  an  inadequate  explanation  of 
a  failure  of  justice. 

Another  question  may  be  conveniently  raised 
at  this  point:  did  Jesus  himself  expect  to  be  put 
to  death?  It  is  clear  that  the  disciples  believed — 
after  the  event — that  he  had  foreseen  this  result, 
and  interpreted  his  sayings  in  this  manner.  But 
it  must  always  remain  doubtful  whether  Jesus 
went  up  to  Jerusalem  with  the  expectation  of 
death  or  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom.  That  he 
expected  rejection  by  the  rulers  of  Jerusalem  is 
clear;  but  did  that  imply  death?  Again,  that  he 
expected  ultimate  triumph  after  this  rejection  is 
also  clear ;  but  was  this  triumph  to  be  the  parousia 
— the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  revealed  as 
Messiah — or  a  resurrection  from  the  dead?     In 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  47 

the  light  of  history  Christian  tradition  decided 
for  death  and  resurrection,  rather  than  rejection 
and  parousia,  which  is  postponed  to  a  future  date. 
But  did  Jesus  speak  in  this  way  himself?  If  he 
were  convinced  that  he  was  going  up  to  Jerusalem 
to  die  and  rise  again,  why  were  the  disciples  thrown 
into  such  consternation  by  his  death,  what  is  the 
meaning  of  the  cry  of  despair  on  the  cross,  and 
why  did  the  disciples  explain  their  downcast  ap- 
pearance by  saying  that  they  had  hoped  that 
he  would  redeem  Israel?  All  these  are  questions 
easy  to  ask  and  difficult  or  impossible  to  answer; 
but  they  are  really  inherent  in  the  gospels  and 
are  not  raised  by  any  love  of  destructive  criticism. 

Thus  two  related  questions  are  finally  reached, 
which  almost  all  Christians  since  the  time  of  St. 
Peter  at  Cassarea  Philippi  have  put  in  the  fore- 
ground, yet  Jesus  himself  never  emphasized  and 
probably  never  discussed  in  public.  What  did  he 
think  of  himself?     And  what  did  he  say  of  himself? 

It  is  necessary  to  distinguish  clearly  between 
what  Jesus  openly  said  of  himself,  and  what  he 
thought  and  allowed  a  small  circle  of  his  disciples 
to  know,  but  not  to  publish. 

So  far  as  can  be  seen  from  the  synoptic  narrative, 
when  Jesus  was  speaking  in  public  he  said  nothing 
of  himself.     He  preached  the  kingdom,  "for  this 


48  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

cause,"  he  said,  "I  came  out."1  So  far  as  his 
public  activity  was  concerned  his  personality  was 
entirely  subordinate  to  his  preaching.  He  might 
know,  by  the  special  revelation  of  God,  what  was 
the  high  position  reserved  for  him  in  the  coming 
kingdom,  but  it  was  his  secret.  For  the  public 
it  was  enough  that  he  should  deliver  his  message, 
that  they  should  believe  it  and  repent.  Disciples 
or  demoniacs  who  guessed  at  the  truth  were 
alike  forbidden  to  reveal  it;  even  John  the  Bap- 
tist, when  he  sent  from  prison  to  ask  whether 
Jesus  was  "he  who  should  come,"  received  no 
definite  answer.  That  he  spoke  as  a  prophet — 
in  the  spirit  of  the  Lord — he  admitted ;  those  who 
said  that  he  cast  out  devils  by  Beelzebub  blas- 
phemed not  man,  but  the  Holy  Spirit.  Very 
probably,2  too,  he  took  to  himself  the  passages  in 

1  Mark  i.,  38. 

2  The  reason  for  hesitating  is  that  the  clearest  indications  are 
found  only  in  passages  peculiar  to  Matthew  or  Luke  (cf.  Matt, 
xii.,  18,  and  Luke  iv.,  16  ff.) ;  there  is  little  or  nothing  to  bear  on  the 
question  in  Mark.  Personally,  however,  I  think  that  although 
the  teaching  [of  the  disciples  may  have  emphasized  the  connexion 
of  Jesus  with  the  "Suffering  Servant"  more  than  Jesus  did  him- 
self, it  is  still  probable  that  the  idea  may  be  traced  to  him,  because 
it  is  implied  in  the  answer  given  to  the  disciples  of  John  (Matt,  xi.,  5 
=  Lc.  vii.,  22),  in  a  passage  which  comes  from  Q.  The  designa- 
tion of  Jesus  as  ira-u  in  Acts  iii.  and  iv.  is  perpetuated  in  early 
liturgical  usage  (1  Clement,  Didache,  Martyr.  Polycarpi,  etc.), 
but  it  gives  us  little  help  in  consequence  of  the  difficult  problem  of 
the  sources  of  Acts,  raised  in  its  most  acute  form  in  these  chapters. 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  49 

Isaiah  which  referred  to  the  "  Servant  of  the 
Lord"  who  was  anointed  with  the  Spirit  in  order 
to  preach  good  news  to  the  poor  and  was  destined 
first  to  suffer  rejection  and  indignity  and  after- 
wards to  be  exalted  by  God;  but  it  is  noteworthy 
that  though  this  passage  was  afterwards  regarded 
by  Christians  as  Messianic,  it  was  never  given 
this  interpretation  by  the  Jews. x 

This — that  Jesus  did  not  announce  himself 
publicly  as  Messiah  or  Christ — is  one  of  the  most 
certain  facts  in  the  gospel  narrative.2  It  is  ob- 
scured if  the  fourth  gospel  be  put  on  a  level  with 
the  synoptic  gospels,  but  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted 
if  modern  synoptic  criticism  be  accepted. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  equally  clear  that 
Jesus  was  convinced  that  when  the  kingdom  came 
he  would  be  the  Messiah,3 — the  King  anointed 
by  God, — and  a  very  small  inner  circle  of  disciples 
had  been  allowed  to  share,  or  in  any  case  had 

1  Noticeable  too  is  the  way  in  which  the  "triumphal  entry" 
into  Jerusalem  is  greeted  by  the  crowd  with  cries  in  honour  of  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom:  it  is  in  Mark  not  personally  Messianic, 
though  it  is  possibly  so  in  Matthew,  and  more  plainly  so  in  Luke. 

2  The  use  of  the  phrase,  Son  of  Man,  does  not  invalidate  this 
conclusion.  It  would  break  the  line  of  the  discussion  too  much 
if  the  point  were  argued  in  the  text,  but  an  additional  note  on  pp. 
54-57  endeavours  to  give  the  main  points  of  the  problem. 

3  Might  we  formulate  this  opinion  more  sharply  by  saying  that 
Jesus  believed  that  the  exaltation  promised  to  the  Suffering 
Servant  was  his  appointment  as  Messiah? 

4 


50  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

discovered,  this  secret.  Probably,  too,  this  con- 
viction of  Jesus  was  intimately  connected  with 
the  voice  of  God  which  he  had  heard  when  he  was 
baptized  by  John  the  Baptist.  Unless  the  gospels 
are  so  hopelessly  corrupt  that  no  historical  evi- 
dence can  be  gained  from  them,  I  do  not  see  how 
this  can  be  doubted.  Jesus  did  not  allow  his 
disciples  to  publish  the  secret  during  his  lifetime, 
but  after  his  death  they  announced  the  fact  in 
Jerusalem  and  regarded  the  resurrection  either  as 
the  proof  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  or  as  the 
moment  when  he  became  Messiah.  It  was  this 
inner  circle  of  disciples,  and  their  preaching  of  the 
Messianic  secret,  which  became  the  foundation  of 
the  Christianity  which  survived,  but  it  is  important 
to  notice  at  once  that  on  the  one  hand  there  must 
have  been  many  disciples  who  had  neither  heard 
of  nor  accepted  the  Messianic  secret,  but  remained 
waiting  for  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  endeavouring 
to  live  as  Jesus  had  instructed  them,  and  on  the 
other  hand,  that  even  the  teaching  of  those  who  ac- 
cepted the  Messianic  secret  was  very  far  removed 
from  the  developed  doctrine  of  the  incarnate  Word 
which  ultimately  conquered  the  Roman  Empire. 

Such  is  a  general  statement  of  the  view  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  and  of  some  of  the  difficulties 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  51 

surrounding  it,  which  seems  to  be  reached  by  a 
study  of  the  earliest  parts  of  the  gospels  in  the 
light  thrown  by  Jewish  apocalyptic  literature. 
It  has  been  called  the  tragedy  of  faith,  but  it 
really  only  represents  the  shipwreck  of  the  hope 
of  Liberal  criticism  in  the  nineteenth  century  to 
find  in  a  critical  reconstruction  of  the  historic 
Jesus  a  solution  for  the  problems  of  the  present 
generation.  If  we  go  back  a  little  we  find  that 
men  believed  in  an  infallible  Bible,  and  that  belief 
has  been  forced  from  us  by  the  undeniable  proof 
of  fallibility.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  belief 
in  an  infallible  Church.  But  Liberal  Protestantism 
in  the  nineteenth  century  thought  that  historical 
criticism  would  remove  all  the  misrepresentations 
of  later  tradition  and  reveal  the  figure  of  the 
historic  Jesus  as  infallible.1  Is  that  hope  also 
to  go?  Yes,  I  fear  so.  It  is  impossible  to  find 
its  fulfilment  in  Jesus  if  he  conditioned  his  teach- 
ing by  Jewish  apocalypticism,   and  believed    in 

1  Moreover,  there  is  a  constant  tendency,  not  only  among 
Liberal  Protestants,  but  also  among  many  who  would  indignantly 
renounce  the  name,  to  confuse — not  identify — Jesus  with  the 
Logos  (see  p.  158  f).  It  is  permissible  to  explain  Jesus  in  terms  of 
a  philosophy  which  he  never  used,  but  scarcely  to  make  claims  on 
his  behalf  to  powers  which  he  neither  claimed  nor  exercised.  It 
is,  I  think,  the  permanent  contribution  of  Dr.  Gore  to  modern 
theology  that  he  made  this  so  plain  to  those  who  were  students  in 
Oxford  in  the  nineties,  though  of  course  I  do  not  imply  that  this 
was  his  intention. 


52  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

what  was,  after  all,  an  illusory  expectation  of  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  But  is  this  a 
tragedy?  It  is,  if  we  have  any  right  to  look  any- 
where for  an  infallible  guide;  but  what  if  the  de- 
sire for  infallibility  is  altogether  wrong?  What  if 
truth  is  something  which  we  can  grasp  only  in 
approximation,  which  can  only  be  presented  to 
the  human  mind  in  forms  which  are  imperfect, 
so  that  each  generation,  and  each  individual,  has 
to  struggle  to  pierce,  as  it  were,  through  the  form 
to  the  underlying  reality?  Religion — to  take  a 
single  manifestation  of  truth — may  be  regarded 
(though  this  is  but  one  way  of  looking  at  it)  as 
conversation  between  the  Heavenly  Father  and 
his  children.  But  that  conversation  is  not  carried 
on  without  difficulty,  or  without  effort  on  the 
part  of  the  children.  It  is  their  natural  but 
mistaken  instinct  to  try  to  find  some  way  of  escap- 
ing that  difficulty  and  effort.  For  the  striving 
of  the  Spirit  in  personal  religion  they  have  tried 
to  substitute  an  infallible  Church,  an  infallible 
Bible,  an  infallible  historic  Jesus.  But  all  these 
have  failed  us,  and  we  are  driven  back  to  a  living 
religion  of  communion  with  God,  without  the 
intervention  of  any  other  guide  claiming  to  be  an 
infallible  substitute  for  personal  effort. 

It  is  not  a  tragedy ;  and  those  who  fight  against 


.  The  Teaching  of  Jesus  53 

it  as  threatening  to  extinguish  faith  seem  to  me  to 
be  like  men  who  have  worked  through  the  night 
and  at  break  of  day  wish  to  cover  up  the  windows, 
lest  the  light  of  their  candles  be  made  dim  by  the 
rising  sun.  For  in  the  end — if  men  have  but  faith 
not  in  formularies  but  in  the  guidance  of  life — 
they  come  back  to  all  that  seems  lost  and  find  in 
it  new  and  greater  values.  They  come  back  to 
the  Church  and  find  in  it  a  community  of  men  who 
in  every  age  have  known  best,  and  described 
best,  what  religion  was  to  them.  They  come 
back  to  the  Bible  and  find  in  it  a  collection  of 
writings  which  have  given  classic  expression  to 
some  of  the  secrets  of  spiritual  life.  They  come 
back  to  the  historic  Jesus,  and  find,  not  an  infal- 
lible escape  from  all  those  "modern  difficulties," 
which  are  their  own,  for  them  to  solve,  but  a  guide 
who  shows  them  the  ultimate  values  of  life,  lifts 
them — if  only  for  a  moment — above  the  details 
of  daily  duty,  and  reveals  to  them  the  eternal 
verities,  in  order  that  they  may  return  to  the  work 
of  the  world,  and  the  responsibilities  of  life,  and 
work  out  the  problems  of  this  "interim"  existence 
in  the  light  of  the  vision  which  they  have  seen. 


54  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

ADDITIONAL   NOTE 

THE  MEANING  OF 

To  have  discussed  this  question  in  the  body  of  the 
chapter  would  have  disturbed  the  line  of  the  argument 
to  an  undesirable  degree.  Nevertheless,  without  at- 
tempting to  add  to  the  knowledge  of  the  professed 
theologian,  it  is  probably  well  to  summarize  the  main 
points  of  this  extraordinarily  difficult  problem. 

(i)  In  Aramaic  "Son  of  Man"  means  a  human 
being, x  and  is  not  a  strange  phrase,  as  it  is  in  Greek  or 
English. 

(2)  In  Daniel  the  supernatural  being  who  represents 
the  kingdom  of  the  Most  High  is  described  as  "like 
unto  a  Son  of  Man  " — i.e.  a  human  figure  in  distinction 
to  the  supernatural  beings  representing  the  kingdom 
of  Babylon,  etc.,  which  were  like  the  lower  animals. 
Moreover  in  Enoch,  apparently  with  a  literary  remin- 
iscence of  Daniel,  the  "Elect  One,"  who  may  with 
some  certainty  be  called  the  Messiah,  is  described  as 
"a  vSon  of  Man, "2  and  in  the  course  of  the  visions  he 
is  referred  to  more  than  once  as  "that  Son  of  Man, M 
until  at  last  he  is  given  a  name  of  supreme  eminence, 
and  appointed  to  act  as  judge  at  the  assize  of  God. 
It  is  thus  in  Jewish  literature  the  designation  of  a 
"man"  in  heaven,  not  on  earth,  who  is  predestined 
to  become  the  Messiah. 

(3)  In  the  gospels,  Jesus  is  frequently  referred  to  as 
the  Son  of  Man,  not  as  the  Messiah;  but  in  the  Acts 
and  Epistles,  he  is  frequently  referred  to  as  the  Mes- 

1  The  Aramaic  (bar  nasha)  could  be  translated  literally  as 
"son  of  man"  or  idiomatically  as  "a  man." 

2  Dr.  R.  H.  Charles  has  argued  in  his  edition  of  "Enoch"  that 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  55 

siah  (Christ),  and  only  once  as  the  Son  of  Man. 
Son  of  Man,  therefore,  in  the  opinion  of  Christians, 
was  correct  as  a  designation  of  Jesus  during  his  life,  I 
but  not  after  his  resurrection  and  ascension.  It  is 
thus  in  the  gospels  not  the  name  of  an  essentially 
heavenly  being.  It  is  this  which  seems  to  differen- 
tiate the  usage  of  the  gospels  from  that  of  Jewish 
apocalyptic  literature. 

(4)  In  Oriental  religions  there  are  traces  of  a  doctrine 
of  a  primeval  divine  Man,  and  it  is  thought  by  some 
scholars  that  this  has  affected,  directly  or  indirectly, 
the  Daniel-Enoch  tradition.  Personally  I  am  scepti- 
cal on  this  point,  though  there  is  very  little  doubt 
but  that  the  "Man"  of  some  gnostic  speculations  is 
connected  with  this  doctrine.1 

Such  are  the  main  facts:  there  is  comparatively 
little  difference  of  opinion  as  to  their  nature,  but  much 
as  to  their  application.  Certain  things  seem  to  be 
probable,  but  the  subject  is  eminently  one  which  calls 
for  caution,  and  the  opening  for  error  is  considerable. 

In  the  first  place  the  possibility  is  great  that  in  the 
earlier  chapters  of  Mark  "Son  of  Man"  is  merely  a 
misunderstanding  of  Aramaic  tradition,  written  or 
oral,  and  that  it  means2  "a  human  being."  This 
applies  with  peculiar  force  to  the  incident  of  the  Sab- 
bath.    The  question  was  not  what  the  Messiah  might 

"Son  of  Man"  in  itself  means  "Messiah";  but  the  facts  seem  to 
be  against  him.  Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  much  in  favour  of  the 
view  that  "Son  of  Man"  in  the  gospels  is  the  same  thing  as  the 
"Suffering  Servant, "'though  in  later  Christian  thought  Messiah, 
Suffering  Servant,  and  Son  of  Man  were  almost  interchangeable. 

1  See  W.  Bousset,  Hauptprobleme  der  Gnosis. 

2  Not  that  the  writer  of  the  gospel  meant  it  in  this  sense,  but 
that  this  had  been  its  force  in  the  original  tradition. 


56  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

do,  but  what  ordinary  human  beings  might  do  on  the 
Sabbath.  "The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not 
man  for  the  Sabbath,  therefore  the  Son  of  Man  is 
lord  also  of  the  Sabbath,"  is  the  Marcan  text,  and 
the  "therefore"  is  meaningless  unless  the  "Son  of 
Man"  in  the  conclusion  is  the  same  as  the  "man"  in 
the  premiss.  The  same  argument  also  applies  to  the 
discussion  of  the  forgiveness  of  sin  at  the  healing  of 
the  paralytic.  The  point  was  not  what  the  Messiah 
could  do,  but  what  a  man  could  do,  and  the  question 
of  Messianic  claims  is  not  alluded  to. 

In  the  second  place  it  seems  to  me  almost  certain 
that  Jesus  often  referred  to  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
Man  with  a  conscious  allusion  to  Daniel,  and  probably 
to  Enoch.  But  though  it  follows  from  the  "  Messianic 
secret"  that  he  believed  that  he  was  this  "Son  of 
Man,"  it  equally  follows  that  he  did  not  say  so  openly, 
and  as  a  corollary  from  this  it  follows  that  the  use  of 
the  phrase  in  the  gospels,  as  we  have  them,  has  been 
influenced  by  the  interpretation  of  the  disciples,  who 
desired  to  make  the  identification  of  Jesus  with  the 
Son  of  Man  more  obvious,  and  sometimes  said  "Son 
of  Man"  when  Jesus  really  said  "I,"  and  sometimes 
perhaps  "I,"  when  Jesus  really  said  "Son  of  Man." 
I  incline  to  doubt  whether  Jesus  referred  to  himself 
as  the  Son  of  Man  except  in  eschatological  passages; 
and  probably  his  hearers  did  not  at  the  time  realize, 
and  were  not  intended  to  realize,  that  he  meant  him- 
self. Of  course  criticism  of  the  narrative  on  these 
lines  is  subjective,  imperfect,  and,  no  doubt,  often 
inaccurate;  but  it  seems  to  me  to  give  a  more  intel- 
ligible explanation  of  the  facts  than  any  other  method. 

Finally,  I  must  admit  to  being  puzzled  by  the  fact 
that  "Son  of  Man"  is  characteristically  used  in  the 


The  Teaching  of  Jesus  57 

gospels,  including  the  fourth  gospel,  but  only  rarely  in 
other  books,  and  seems  to  have  been  interpreted  by 
Christian  writers  as  a  description  of  the  earthly  Jesus, 
though  the  apocalyptic  books  and  Jesus  himself  used 
it  as  a  description  of  the  heavenly  Messiah,  before  he 
takes  up  the  work  of  the  Messiah.1  One  would  have 
expected  that  it  would  have  been  used  by  the  Chris- 
tians as  a  description  of  the  exalted  Jesus :  but  this  is 
not  the  case,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  dying 
vision  of  Stephen,2  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Jesus 
himself  describes  the  Son  of  Man  coming  from  heaven, 
The  other  difficulties  in  connexion  with  the  Son  of 
Man  admit  of  possible,  though  tentative,  solutions; 
but  I  know  of  no  complete  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  Luke  did  not  use  the  phrase  for  the  ascended 
Jesus  in  agreement  with  Jesus*  own  usage,  and  that  of 
the  apocalyptic  writers,  but  applied  it  to  Jesus  in  the 
days  of  his  flesh.  Moreover,  it  seems  probable  that 
the  same  thing  is  true  even  of  Mark.  Son  of  Man  in 
the  mouth  of  Mark,  as  distinct  from  the  passages 
where  it  is  probably  an  accurate  quotation  from 
Jesus  himself,  means  Jesus  on  earth.  It  is  thus  not  1 
the  equivalent  of  Messiah,  a  title  which  Mark  avoids,  I 
but  is  rather  "  he  who  is  to  be  Messiah."  To  some 
extent  this  may  be  explained  as  a  somewhat  confused 
recollection  of  Enoch,  but  the  difficulty  still  remains 
that  in  Enoch  Son  of  Man  is  a  human  figure  in  [J 
heaven,  not  a  human  figure  on  the  earth. 

1  Once  more  the  eschatological  side  of  the  synoptic  gospels  vindi- 
cates itself:  it  is  plain  enough  that  the  writer  used  "Son  of  Man" 
as  meaning  "Jesus  on  earth";  but  in  the  passages  in  which  it  is 
certain  that  Jesus  uses  it  of  himself,  it  refers  to  his  coming  as  a 
heavenly  being.     Thus  these  passages  are  not  Christian  invention. 

3  In  Apoc.  i.,  13,  "like  unto  a  son  of  man,"  is  merely  literary 
reminiscence  from  Daniel. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  CHURCH  TO  THE  ROMAN 
EMPIRE 

The  Marcan  Tradition  of  the  Resurrection — The  Church  in  Jeru- 
salem —  The  Hellenists  —  Cornelius  and  Modern  Prob- 
lems— The  Roman  Empire — The  Cult  of  the  Emperors — 
Astral  Stoicism  —  The  Mysteries  —  The  Synagogue  —  The 
God-fearers. 

THE  events  immediately  succeeding  the  Cru- 
cifixion are  the  most  obscure  in  Christian 
history;   but    certain   facts   emerge,    even 
though  the  course  of  events  cannot  be  precisely 
followed. 

For  the  first  days  of  the  period  the  best  infor- 
mation given  us  is  still  to  be  found  in  the  gospel 
of  Mark.  Although  the  narrative  of  the  actual 
events  no  longer  exists,1  it  is  clear  from  the  indi- 
cation in  Mark  xvi.,  7  ("Tell  his  disciples  that  he 

1  Mark  xvi.,  9-20,  by  the  common  consent  of  almost  all  critics — 
I  know  of  no  exceptions,  though  such  may  possibly  exist — is  not 
part  of  the  original  gospel.  It  is  not,  however,  probable  that  the 
gospel  ended  with  the  "for  they  were  afraid,"  of  Mark  xvi.,  8, 
though  a  few  eminent  scholars,  such  as  Wellhausen,  take  this 
view.  Unless  they  are  right  the  one  thing  certain  is,  as  stated 
above,  that  the  appearance  of  the  risen  Lord  was  placed  in  Galilee. 

58 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    59 

goes  before  you  to  Galilee,  there  you  will  see  him"), 
that  the  disciples  went  to  Galilee,  and  first  saw 
the  risen  Lord  there,  and  not  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Jerusalem.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  this 
narrative.  It  was  perfectly  natural  for  the  dis- 
ciples to  scatter  back  into  Galilee  when  their 
journey  to  Jerusalem  had  ended  in  the  crucifixion 
of  their  Master  instead  of  in  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  doubt  that 
they  "saw"  the  Lord  in  Galilee;  all  are  forced  to 
agree  on  this  point,  even  if  they  differ  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  vision.  But  after  this  the  Marcan 
narrative  gives  but  partial  help. 

It  gives  us,  however,  sufficient  to  enable  us  to 
see  how  the  followers  of  Jesus  arrived,  not  at  only 
the  fact  that  he  had  risen,  but  at  some  of  the 
attendant  circumstances.  His  grave  had  been 
found  empty  by  certain  women  who  had  visited 
it;  and  a  "young  man"  had  spoken  words  which 
seemed  to  assure  them  of  the  Resurrection.  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  whilst  scien- 
tific criticism  is  bound  to  follow  the  best  tradition 
so  far  as  it  relates  facts,  it  is  not  obliged  to  accept 
their  traditional  explanation.  We  may  concede 
the  fact  that  the  tomb  was  empty,  even  though 
we  think  it  improbable  that  the  corpse  of  Jesus 
had  been  materially  resuscitated,  or  doubt  whether 


60  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  report  of  the  words  of  the  "young  man"  has 
not  been  coloured  by  subsequent  Christian  belief. 
To  follow  the  story  further  it  is  necessary  to 
turn  to  Acts.  This  is  unfortunately  less  convincing 
in  the  earlier  than  in  the  later  chapters.  Com- 
paring the  third  gospel  and  Acts  with  Mark  it  is 
clear  that  the  writer  of  the  former  books  omits 
altogether  the  episode  of  the  flight  of  the  disciples 
to  Galilee  and  the  vision  of  the  risen  Jesus.  He  is 
unaware  of,  if  he  does  not  deliberately  reject,  any 
story  involving  the  absence  of  the  disciples  from 
Jerusalem.  Nor  does  he  give  us  any  information 
as  to  the  return  of  the  disciples,  nor  specify  the 
events  leading  to  the  establishment  of  a  community 
at  Jerusalem.  Some  things  may,  however,  be 
gathered  from  his  narrative  and  regarded  as 
certain.  The  new  community  did  not  separate 
itself  from  the  Jewish  religion.  The  brethren 
remained  steadfast  to  the  same  teaching  as  Jesus 
had  given — the  belief  in  the  coming  of  the  king- 
dom, and  the  need  of  repentance — but  they  seem 
to  have  laid  less  emphasis  on  the  points  of  difference 
between  themselves  and  the  dominant  parties  of 
the  Jews:  we  hear  nothing  more  of  controversy 
as  to  the  Sabbath  or  the  laws  of  purification. 
Thus  they  continued  to  frequent  the  Temple, 
and  the  leaders  of  the  Jews,  apart  from  some  not 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    61 

very  severe  attempts  at  repression,  took  no  active 
measures  to  expel  them  permanently.  Only  in 
two  aspects  did  they  differ  seriously  from  their 
fellow-countrymen.  In  the  first  place,  they  be- 
lieved that  Jesus  was  the  predestined  Messiah,  in 
support  of  which  view  they  appealed  to  the  Re- 
surrection rather  than  the  more  ethical  questions 
which  Jesus  had  put  in  the  foreground,  until  this 
gradually  became  the  main  subject  of  contention 
between  them  and  the  hierarchy.  In  the  second 
place,  they  claimed  that  they  had  been  granted  a 
special  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  this 
— doubtless  based  on  psychological  experience — 
they  regarded  as  the  gift  of  the  exalted  Jesus, 
and  as  the  fulfilment  of  eschatological  prophecy.1 

1  One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  interpretation  is  to  find 
out  what  relation  was  supposed  to  subsist  between  the  Spirit  and 
the  risen  Jesus.  As  a  preliminary  we  need  to  know  what  was  the 
Jewish  conception  of  the  event  which  justified  the  statement  that 
"the  spirit  of  Elijah  rests  on  Elisha."  The  spirit  which  spoke 
through  Elijah — or  the  other  prophets — was  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord,  but  it  was  also  in  some  sense  the  spirit  of  Elijah.  I  take  it 
that  the  disciples  regarded  the  Holy  Spirit  which  came  over  them 
as  in  the  same  way  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  also  the  Spirit  of  Jesus. 
Another  point  of  importance  is  the  analogy  from  the  other  side 
of  pneumatology — demonology — afforded  by  the  fact  that,  as 
Josephus  says,  the  demons  were  the  ghosts  of  wicked  men,  and 
that  yet  the  demons  were  also  diabolic  beings.  Once  more,  what 
is  the  connection  between  these  facts,  the  Syriac  custom  of  giving 
the  title  of  Lord  to  dead  persons  of  eminent  sanctity  (much  as 
Western  Christians  use  the  title  Saint),  and  the  Pauline  identifica- 
tion of  the  Lord  and  the  Spirit?    The  problem  is  obvious,  but  I 


62  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

This  gift  of  the  Spirit,  accompanied  by  curious 
physical  phenomena — as  extreme  emotion  fre- 
quently is — was  especially  valued,  and  was  re- 
garded as  the  confirmation  of  their  belief,  and 
the  assurance  of  their  favoured  position  in  the 
kingdom. 

The  conversion  of  some  Hellenistic  Jews  in 
Jerusalem  changed  the  situation.  Born  or  edu- 
cated, as  these  had  been,  in  different  parts  of  the 
Empire  outside  Palestine,  they  naturally  united  the 
liberal  principles  of  the  Dispersion  to  the  teaching 
of  Jesus.  Their  doctrinal  innovations  provoked  the 
authorities  to  put  to  death  the  leader  of  the  move- 
ment, the  proto-martyr  Stephen,  and  to  disperse 
the  Christian  community.  But  the  Apostles,  we 
are  told,  remained,  and  the  older  Hebrew  Chris- 
tians apparently  rallied  again  in  Jerusalem  in  a 
church  which,  according  to  tradition,  continued 
for  some  two  generations.  But  the  story  of  Chris- 
tianity is  the  story  of  those  who  were  driven  out 
of  Jerusalem,  not  of  those  who  remained,  and 
the  most  remarkable  fact — assumed  in  Acts,  but 
passed  over  without  explanation — is  that  Peter, 
the  original  leader  of  the  community  at  Jerusalem, 
moved  over  to  the  Hellenistic  development,  and 

do  not  know  of  any  treatise  which  satisfactorily  deals  with  the 
whole  subject. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    63 

the  leadership  of  the  disciples  at  Jerusalem  was 
taken  by  James,  the  Lord's  brother. 

The  Hellenistic  movement,  urged  on  by  perse- 
cution, spread  rapidly  to  places  which  were  more 
Gentile  than  Jewish;  and  the  question  could  not 
long  be  postponed,  whether  the  gospel  might  be 
preached  to  Gentiles  without  insisting  on  their 
becoming  Jews  and  submitting  to  circumcision. 
The  author  of  the  Acts  gives  in  order  the  stages 
in  which  the  treatment  of  this  problem  developed. 
First  comes  the  conversion,  reception  of  the  Spirit, 
and  baptism — notice  the  order  of  events — of  the 
Roman  centurion,  Cornelius.  This  settled  the 
question  of  principle,  and  the  Hellenistic  move- 
ment next  spread  rapidly  to  Antioch,  where  it 
formed  a  new  centre  of  activity  and  under  the 
leadership  of  Barnabas  and  Paul  undertook  a 
further  extension  of  missionary  work.  Then  we 
have  the  account  of  the  mission  to  Cyprus  and 
Galatia  of  Barnabas  and  Paul,  representing  the 
church  of  Antioch,  with  a  wholesale  and  appar- 
ently unconditional  admission  of  Gentiles.  This 
stimulated  the  older  community  at  Jerusalem  to 
protests  and  hostile  propaganda,  and  to  the  de- 
mand that  all  converts  should  be  circumcised 
and  observe  the  Law.  Lastly,  we  have  the  story 
of  the  council  of  Jerusalem,  which  laid  down  some- 


64  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

what  obscure  conditions  for  the  conduct  of  Gentile 
Christians  but  was  in  the  main  a  triumph  for  the 
Antiochene  mission. 

Henceforward  Hellenistic  Christianity  was  com- 
mitted to  missionary  propaganda  in  the  Roman 
Empire  on  lines  differing  from  those  of  the  Jewish 
missionaries  or  of  Judaistic  Christians,  and — 
though  this  was  no  doubt  not  recognized  at  the 
time — it  was  inevitably  destined,  as  the  condition 
of  success,  to  adopt  Graeco-Roman  or  Greeco- 
Oriental  forms  of  expression,  both  in  theology  and 
cultus,  and  to  lose  much  of  its  originally  Jewish 
character.  It  is  therefore  necessary  at  this  point 
to  break  off  from  the  history  of  Christianity  and 
turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
into  which  it  now  began  to  make  its  way.  But 
before  entering  on  this  subject  it  is  well  to  em- 
phasize the  abiding  importance  of  the  first  of  the 
incidents  just  enumerated — the  acceptance  by 
St.  Peter  of  the  Roman  centurion. 

The  conversion  of  Cornelius  represents  the 
recognition  of  facts  and  a  consequent  change  of 
principle.  Up  to  that  time  nationality,  whether 
obtained  by  birth  or  by  proselytism,  which  is  only 
another  name  for  naturalization,  and  circumcision, 
which  was  the  national  custom,  were  the  neces- 
sary conditions  of  entry  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    65 

When  the  kingdom  came  all  its  members  would 
enjoy  the  gift  of  the  Spirit,  and  the  Christians 
who  had  received  the  Spirit  had  done  so  as  a  fore- 
taste of  the  privileges  of  the  Messianic  period. 
That  any  one  should  enjoy  the  gift  of  the  Spirit 
and  nevertheless  be  outside  the  kingdom  of  God 
was  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Therefore  when 
Cornelius  received  the  gift  of  the  Spirit,  though 
he  had  neither  become  a  Jew  nor  been  circumcised, 
the  Christians  drew  the  conclusion  which  the  logic 
of  facts  impressed  on  them,  "Then  to  the  Gentiles 
also  hath  God  granted  repentance  unto  life." 
The  early  founders  of  the  Hellenistic  church 
accepted  the  witness  of  the  Spirit  as  superior  to 
the  authority  of  custom  or  tradition,  even  though 
the  tradition  had  the  authority  of  the  words  of 
Moses  and  of  the  thunder  of  Sinai. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  one  of  the  ways 
in  which  official  Christianity  in  the  great  orthodox 
churches,  as  well  Protestant  as  Catholic,  is  stand- 
ing at  the  cross  roads,  is  that  it  is  hesitating 
whether  to  follow  the  example  of  the  Hellenistic 
or  the  Judaizing  Christians.  What  makes  a  Chris- 
tian Pisa  question  more  and  more  often  heard .  The 
official  churches  answer,  according  to  their  respec- 
tive tenets:  "Baptism,"  "The  acceptance  of  a 
Christocentric  creed,"  "Episcopal  orders,"  "The 


66  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

recognition  of  the  Pope,"1  and  appeal  to  the 
Scripture  and  the  authority  of  tradition.  His- 
torically they  are  all  more  or  less  right,  and  on 
the  whole  the  more  " Catholic"  the  greater  is 
their  historical  justification.  But  historically  the 
Judaizing  Christians  were  right,  for  the  authority 
of  tradition  and  scriptural  proof  was  on  their  side. 
The  one  thing  necessary,  however,  was  the  evi- 
dence of  existing  spiritual  life,  and  that  was  on  the 
side  of  Cornelius  and  St.  Peter.  So  it  is  also 
today.  There  are  Quakers  and  Unitarians  who 
have  little  claim  to  be  regarded  as  Christians  if 
the  matter  is  to  be  settled  by  an  appeal  to  his- 
torical evidence.  But  they  have  the  testimonium 
spiritus  sancti,  the  witness  of  existing  spiritual 
life.  No  one  who  has  ever  had  the  privilege  of 
admission  to  their  devotions  can  doubt  that  their 
religious  life  has  exactly  the  same  spiritual  quality 
as  that  of  the  Christians  who  are  historically  most 
correct.  The  "great  churches,"  if  they  rely  on 
historical  evidence,  have  unanswerable  arguments 
in  favour  of  rejecting  the  claims  of  this  new  type 
of  Christianity,2  and  can  do  all  over  the  world 
what  they  have  done  in  Holland — degrade  "  Chris- 

1  Or  they  combine  these  in  varying  proportions. 

2 1  am  not  writing  in  the  interests  of  "reunion" — which  I 
distrust — but  of  a  frank  recognition  of  the  value  and  equality 
of  many  institutional  forms  of  the  one  spiritual  life. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    67 

tian"  to  the  recognized  title  of  a  special  type  of 
theological  thought.  But  if  in  this  way  they  rest 
their  appeal  on  the  past,  to  the  past  they  will  soon 
belong,  for,  in  the  language  of  St.  Peter,  who  are 
they  to  withstand  God?  In  whatever  language 
it  be  expressed,  the  foundation  of  Christianity  is 
the  possession  of  the  Spirit,  not  theological  for- 
mulae or  the  preservation  of  traditional  forms, 
and  the  Spirit  will  not  long  remain  with  those 
who  refuse  to  listen  to  its  witness. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  history  of 
the  early  Empire  is  that  it  represents  a  double 
stream  of  progress.  Political  progress  was  con- 
stantly moving  from  West  to  East,  but  religious 
life  was  moving  from  East  to  West,  and  the  con- 
fluence of  these  two  streams  produced  many 
strange  eddies  of  opinion  and  practice. 

At  the  time  when  Christianity  first  began  to 
enter  the  Empire  at  Antioch — high  up  in  the  west- 
ward flowing  stream — the  Empire  was  still  young. 
Many  things,  such  as  the  government  of  the 
provinces,  were  comparatively  undeveloped,  but 
it  is  allowable  for  the  present  purpose  to  look 
somewhat  further  ahead,  and  regard  the  Empire  as 
it  became  after  a  slightly  longer  development,  in  or- 
der to  understand  the  principles  which  it  embodied. 


68  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

If  we  consider  the  Roman  Empire  first  of  all 
from  its  political  side,  which  was  in  many  ways 
the  most  important,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  no- 
ticing in  how  many  ways  it  reminds  us  of  our  own 
time.  Again  and  again  in  reading  about  it  we  have 
an  uncanny  feeling  that  it  is  not  a  description  of 
something  past,  but  only  a  slightly  distorted 
picture  of  what  is  going  on  now,  or  may  be  going 
to  happen  in  the  immediate  future.  And,  though 
the  policy  of  the  Roman  Empire  with  regard  to 
nationality  was  more  like  that  of  the  British 
Empire  than  anything  else  in  modern  civilization, 
the  condition  of  society  in  the  Empire  resembled 
some  sides  of  American  life  as  much  as  anything 
existing  in  the  old  world. 

In  the  first  place  it  was  a  society  in  which  the 
governing  class  belonged,  as  a  whole,  to  a  different 
race  from  the  classes  which  were  being  governed. 
There  was  at  the  head  of  affairs  a  small  Roman 
population  which  was  with  extraordinary  skill 
managing  affairs,  and  extending  the  limits  of 
civilization,  but  below  it  there  was  a  great  crowd 
which  was  not  Roman,  but  was  serving  the  Romans 
and  doing  the  work  of  the  Empire  under  their 
guidance — a  crowd  drawn  from  Greece,  Gaul, 
Spain,  Syria,  Armenia,  Egypt,  Africa,  Mesopo- 
tamia, and  being  slowly  welded  together  by  learn- 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    69 

ing  to  work  better,  and  in  some  cases  to  think 
more  straightly.  That  was  the  task  which  the 
Roman  Empire  was  trying  to  fulfil  by  a  system 
of  provinces  and  municipalities,  each  with  some 
degree  of  autonomy,  but  all  ultimately  responsible 
to  the  central  authority. 

No  book  gives  a  more  interesting  glimpse  of  the 
working  of  the  system  than  those  letters  which 
preserve  the  correspondence  of  the  Emperor  Trajan 
and  Pliny  when  the  latter  was  governor  of  a 
province.  It  shows  that  the  Empire  was  faced 
by  certain  grave  difficulties;  and  those  which 
most  come  to  the  front  are,  in  the  first  place, 
that  there  were  not  enough  good  men  who  were 
prepared  to  take  up  the  service  of  the  state,  and, 
in  the  second  place,  that  in  the  province  over 
which  Pliny  was  set  the  local  administration  was 
partly  foolish  and  partly  corrupt.  The  men  who 
were  in  charge  of  the  government  of  the  towns 
were  spending  money  not  in  the  real  interests  of 
the  town  to  which  they  belonged,  but  in  the  in- 
terests of  themselves,  and  of  their  friends.  The 
municipal  government  was  corrupt,  and  where  it 
was  not  corrupt  it  was  often  foolish,  so  that  the 
municipal  authorities  became  the  easy  prey  of  the 
rich  Greeks  or  Syrians  who  made  their  living  as 
parasites  upon  the  system  of  the  municipal  govern- 


70  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

ment.  It  was  failing,  then,  because  it  was  partly- 
corrupt  and  partly  unintelligent.  And  as  the 
necessary  outcome  of  these  difficulties  there  was 
a  constant  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  authorities 
to  truckle  to  the  baser  parts  of  the  population,  to 
spend  money  in  organizing  games,  wild  beast 
fights,  and  other  things  which  appealed  to  their 
lower  instincts. 

Those  were  the  difficulties  against  which  an 
upright  and  able  governor  like  Pliny  had  to  fight ; 
they  were  throughout  its  history  the  difficulties 
of  the  Roman  Empire  on  the  political  side.  We 
cannot  but  admire  the  enormous  energy  of  that 
comparatively  small  body  of  Romans  who  did, 
in  spite  of  these  obstacles,  contrive  for  at  least 
three  centuries  to  maintain  a  successful  struggle, 
even  though  we  are  obliged  to  admit  that  in  the 
end  the  Empire  failed ;  partly  because  it  did  not 
succeed  completely  in  overcoming  its  difficulties; 
and  also,  I  think,  partly  because  that  small  body 
of  men  was  unequal  to  the  task.  They  became 
a  tired  nation,  they  let  the  work  fall  from  their 
hands,  and  the  Dark  Ages  came.  * 

1  Such,  at  least,  is  the  impression  made  on  me  by  the  picture  of 
society  in  the  fourth  century  so  graphically  presented  by  Dr.  Dill. 
The  great  country  houses  of  Italy  and  Gaul  show  us  great  culture 
and  considerable  piety,  but  not  much  energy.  A  hundred  years 
later  they  had  ceased  to  exist. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    71 

If  we  turn  to  the  stream  of  Oriental  religions, 
which  was  flowing  westward  into  the  Empire, 
and  look  for  the  part  which  was  most  closely  con- 
nected with  the  progress  of  Roman  civilization, 
there  can  be  no  hesitation  in  choosing  the  cult  of 
the  emperors. 

The  belief  that  kings  are  divine  is  originally  an 
Oriental  belief,  so  far  as  the  history  of  the  religious 
life  of  the  Roman  Empire  is  concerned,  though  it 
may  have  belonged  in  almost  prehistoric  days  to 
primitive  Roman  religion  and  is  probably  part 
of  primitive  religion  almost  everywhere.  s 

Its  immediate  history  in  the  period  which  con- 
cerns us  seems  to  be  that  it  was  found  in  the  East 
by  Alexander  the  Great,  was  adopted  by  the 
Ptolemies  and  the  Seleucid  kings,  his  successors 
in  Egypt  and  Asia,  and  passed  from  them  to 
the  Caesars.  It  was  at  first  especially  strong 
in  the  eastern  provinces,  but  gradually  be- 
came the  central  cult  of  the  official  life  of  the 
Empire. 

The  memory  of  the  struggle  for  life  and  death 
which  was  waged  between  this  cult  and  the  Church 
in  the  second  and  third  centuries  makes  us  inclined 
to  ignore  its  true  nature.     To  us  it  is  a  ridiculous 

1  Cf.  J.  G.  Frazer,  Lectures  on  the  Early  History  of  the 
Kingship,  and  the  third  edition  of  The  Golden  Bough. 


72  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

superstition,  only  possible  to  sycophantic  courtiers. 
But  it  had  its  other  side.  The  pagan  world  of 
the  first  and  second  centuries  was  not  so  keenly 
alive  as  the  Jewish  or  Christian  churches  to  the 
claims  of  monotheism,  but  it  felt  deeply  the  truth 
of  a  theology  which  emphasized  the  working  of 
God  in  the  world  through  the  institutions  of 
established  society.  Nor  is  it  wonderful  if  it  saw 
something  divine  in  the  Roman  Empire  and  in  its 
head — the  Caesar.  The  period  which  ended  with 
Actium  had  been  a  century  of  incessant  struggle. 
Massacre,  civil  war,  revolution,  bloodshed,  pro- 
scription, and  terror  were  its  predominant  features. 
Property  had  been  without  protection,  and  human 
life  without  security.  But  with  the  reign  of 
Augustus  a  new  age  seemed  to  have  begun,  the 
golden  years  of  peace  had  returned — it  was  the 
work  of  the  gods.  Just  as  the  Jews  had  comforted 
themselves  with  the  hope  that  the  kingdom  of 
God  was  at  hand,  the  Romans  were  proud  to 
believe  that  it  had  already  come ;  nor  for  a  genera- 
tion to  whom  the  working  of  God  in  the  world 
seemed  always  to  appeal  most  vividly  when  it 
was  presented  in  human  form,  clothed  with  the 
majesty  of  exceptional  ability  and  unusual  power, 
was  it  difficult  to  believe  that  Augustus,  whose 
efforts  had  thus  wonderfully  brought  peace  and 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    73 

order  into  a  world  of  strife  and  confusion,  was 
himself  divine.1 

This  form  of  heathenism  naturally  brought  with 
it  a  world-affirming  ethic.  This  and  its  concept  of 
law  were  its  permanent  contribution  to  progress. 2 
It  calls  men  to  forget  their  personal  interests  not 
for  the  sake  of  their  neighbours  as  individuals, 
but  for  society  regarded  as  a  living  organism,  worth 
more,  in  some  mysterious  and  almost  mystical 
way,  than  the  sum  of  the  individuals  which  com- 
pose it,  just  as  a  man  is  more  than  the  sum  of  his 
members.  It  was  in  one  sense  a  religion,  inas- 
much as — at  least  to  some  minds — it  was  the 
working  of  God  in  the  world,  and  the  service  of 
the  state  was  really  the  service  of  God  who  willed 
the  state.  It  would  be  very  unfair  to  deny  to 
this  attitude  a  spiritual  character  and  an  insight 
into  truth.  But  the  intellect  asks  for  more  than 
the   mere  recognition  of   "God  in   Society";  it 

1  A  rich  collection  of  inscriptions  and  quotations  referring  to  the 
emperors  as  "Divine, "  "Saviours,"  etc.,  is  given  by  P.  Wendland 
in  an  extremely  important  article,  <rtbT7}pt  in  the  Zeitschrijt  fur 
neutestamentliche  Wissenschaft,  1904,  p.  335  ff. 

2  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  no  other  system  ever  had  a 
world-affirming  ethic.  But  the  Roman  Empire  so  stamped  it 
into  the  human  mind  that  within  the  limits  of  existing  Western 
civilization  it  can  never  again  be  forgotten.  Men  may  evade  or 
exploit  it,  but  even  if  with  Pecksniffian  lips,  they  will  recognize 
as  an  axiom  their  "duty  to  society, "  which  is  a  different  (though 
allied)  concept  from  the  evangelical  "love  of  neighbour." 


74  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

desires  a  "view  of  the  world,"  and  the  intellect  of 
the  Roman  Empire  found  this  not  in  the  inherited 
Roman  religion  (which  it  supported,  at  the  insti- 
gation of  Augustus,  partly  as  an  interesting  form 
of  archaeology,  partly  as  a  convenient  sedative  for 
the  lower  classes) ,  but  in  a  combination  of  Stoicism 
and  Astralism1  which  formed  another  eddy  in 
the  westward-flowing  stream  of  religion  and  theo- 
logical speculation. 

This  Astral  Stoicism,  perhaps  best  known  to  us 
now  through  the  writings  of  Seneca,  was  probably 
introduced  in  the  first  place  by  the  influence  of 
Posidonius  of  Apamea.  He  had  many  pupils, 
of  whom  Cicero  is  the  most  widely  known,  and 
Manilius,  the  author  of  the  Astronomica,  perhaps 
the  best  representative. 2 

The  main  features  of  this  Weltanschauung  were 
a  strict  determinism  based  on  the  observation  of 
the  unvarying  movements  of  the  astral  world  and 
the  theory  that  the  same  unswerving  "fate"  which 

1 1  think  that  Astralism  is  a  better  word  than  Astrology, 
because  in  practice  Astrology  has  come  to  mean  foretelling  the 
future  by  the  stars.  The  teaching  of — for  instance — Manilius 
is  a  great  deal  more  than  this. 

a  Cf.  the  Disputationes  Tusculance  and  especially  the 
Somnium  Scipionis.  Posidonius'  own  writings  are  not  extant; 
of  the  growing  modern  literature  on  his  work  and  influence  some 
of  the  most  important  are  Corsen,  De  Posidonio  Rhodio,  and 
E.  Bevan's  Stoics  and  Sceptics. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    75 

guided  the  sun  and  planets  and  stars  also  guided 
human  beings,  so  that  there  was  a  fixed  connection 
between  the  circling  stars  and  the  cycle  of  mortal 
life,  because  the  stars  were  partly  subject  to  the 
same  "Destiny"  which  reigned  supreme  in  the 
universe,  and  partly  were  in  some  mysterious 
manner  its  agents.  "Fate  rules  the  world  and  all 
is  established  by  fixed  law"1  is  the  conclusion  to 
which  Manilius  comes. 

The  supreme  end  of  man  was  the  complete 
surrender  of  himself  to  this  omnipotent  force,  that 
he  might  so  be  identified  with  the  deity  as  to  find 
his  sole  pleasure  in  submitting  to  the  decrees  which 
he  could  in  no  case  avoid,  and  thus  in  a  certain 
sense  achieve  the  presence  of  God  in  man — 
inpendendus  homo  est,  deus  esse  ut  possit  in  ipso.2 
There  was  probably  some  degree  of  difference 
between  individual  members  of  this  type  of  re- 
ligious thought  as  to  the  emphasis  which  was  laid 
on  the  direct  influence  of  the  stars  or  planets;  and 
the  most  elevated  natures,  such  as  Seneca,  seem  to 
have  been  Stoics  and  Determinists  rather  than 
Astral  worshippers.     They  had  broken  with  the 

1  " Fata regunt orbera,  certa  stant  omnia  lege." — Man.,  iv.,  14. 

a  Manilius,  iv.,  407.  The  best  statement  of  this  view  is  F. 
Cumont:  Astrology  and  Religion  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
191 2.  Cf.  also  his  La  Religion  solaire  du  Paganisme  romain, 
1909;  and  Fatalisme  astral  et  Religions  antiques,  1912. 


76  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

ancestral  mythology,  and  they  did  not  replace  it. 
In  general  terms  they  perceived  the  working  of  the 
same  law  in  the  natural  and  spiritual  worlds,  and 
they  recognized  the  mediated  working  of  that  law 
alike  in  the  stars  of  heaven  and  in  the  ruler  of  the 
Roman  Empire  on  earth.  They  submitted  to  both, 
and  so  far  as  in  them  lay  co-operated  with  both ; 
they  believed  that  in  the  end  this  was  the  way  of 
life  and  the  road  of  happiness,  but  they  did  not 
pretend  to  explain  in  detail  why  it  was  so.  It  was 
an  austere  religion,  but  it  was  in  no  sense  a  bad  or 
false  religion.  A  true  feeling  for  an  anima 
naturaliter  Christiana  almost  made  the  Christians 
of  later  centuries  regard  Seneca,  its  most  remark- 
able adherent,  as  a  Christian  saint,  and  I  cannot 
refrain  from  quoting  part  of  Dr.  Dill's  brilliant 
and  sympathetic  description  of  Seneca's  religious 
position: 

Seneca  had  one  great  superiority  over  other  equally 
religious  souls  of  his  time,  which  enables  him  to 
approach  mediaeval  and  modern  religious  thought — he 
had  broken  absolutely  with  paganism.  He  started 
with  belief  in  the  god  of  the  Stoic  creed.  He  never 
mentions  the  Stoic  theology  which  attempted  to 
reconcile  him  with  the  gods  of  the  Pantheon.  In  spite 
of  all  his  rhetoric  he  tries  to  see  the  facts  of  human 
life  and  the  relation  of  the  human  spirit  to  the  Divine 
in  the  light  of  reason,  with  no  intervening  veil  of 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    77 

legend.  God  is  to  Seneca  the  great  Reality,  however 
halting  human  speech  may  describe  him  as  Fate,  or 
Law,  or  Eternal  Reason,  or  watchful  Providence. 
God  is  within  us,  in  whatever  mysterious  way,  inspir- 
ing good  resolves,  giving  strength  in  temptation,  with 
all-seeing  eye  watching  the  issue  of  the  struggle.  God 
is  without  us,  loading  us  with  kindness  even  when  we 
offend,  chastising  us  in  mercy,  the  goal  of  all  specula- 
tion, he  from  whom  we  proceed,  to  whom  we  go  at 
death.  The  true  worship  of  him  is  not  in  formal 
prayer  and  sacrifice,  but  in  striving  to  know  and 
imitate  his  infinite  goodness.  We  mortal  men  in  our 
brief  life  on  earth  may  be  citizens  of  two  common- 
wealths, one  the  Rome  or  Corinth  of  our  birth,  the 
other  that  great  city  of  gods  and  men,  in  which  all 
are  equally  united,  male  and  female,  bond  and  free, 
and  children  of  a  common  Father.  In  this  ideal 
citizenship,  in  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  spiritual 
city,  the  eternal  law  which  makes  for  righteousness, 
man  attains  his  full  freedom  and  final  beatitude  in 
communion  with  kindred  souls. 

Yet,  as  in  mediaeval  and  Puritan  theory,  there  is 
in  Seneca  a  strange  conflict  between  pessimism  and 
idealism.  To  the  doomed  philosophic  statesman  of 
the  reign  of  Nero  the  days  of  man's  life  are  few  and 
evil.  Life  is  but  a  moment  in  the  tract  of  infinite  age, 
and  so  darkened  by  manifold  sins  and  sorrows  that  it 
seems,  as  it  did  to  Sophocles,  a  sinister  gift.  On  the 
other  hand,  its  shortness  is  a  matter  of  no  importance; 
the  shortest  life  may  be  full  and  glad  if  it  be  dignified 
by  effort  and  resignation  and  conformity  to  the  great 
law  of  the  universe.  The  wise  and  pious  man,  ever 
conscious  of  his  brief  time  of  probation,  may  brighten 
each  passing  day  into  a  festival  and  lengthen  it  into 


78  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

a  life.  The  shortness  of  life  is  only  an  illusion,  for 
long  or  short  has  no  meaning  when  measured  by 
the  days  of  eternity.  And  the  philosopher  may  unite 
many  lives  in  one  brief  span.  He  may  join  himself 
to  a  company  of  sages  who  add  their  years  to  his,  who 
counsel  without  bitterness  and  praise  without  flattery ; 
he  may  be  adopted  into  a  family  whose  wealth  in- 
creases the  more  it  is  divided ;  in  him  all  the  ages  may 
be  combined  in  a  single  life.  To  such  a  spirit  death 
loses  all  terrors.  The  eternal  mystery  indeed  can  be 
pierced  only  by  imaginative  hope.  Death  we  may  be 
sure,  however,  can  only  be  a  change.  It  may  be  a 
passage  into  calm  unconsciousness,  as  before  our 
birth,  which  will  release  us  from  all  the  griefs  and 
tumults  of  the  life  here  below.  It  may,  on  the  other 
hand,  prove  to  be  the  morning  of  an  eternal  day,  the 
entrance  to  a  radiant  and  untroubled  world  of  infinite 
possibilities.  In  any  case,  the  spirit  which  has  trained 
itself  in  obedience  to  eternal  law  will  not  tremble  at  a 
fate  which  is  surely  reserved  for  the  universe,  by  fire 
or  flood  or  other  cataclysmal  change.  The  future  in 
store  for  the  soul  is  either  to  dwell  for  ever  among 
things  Divine,  or  to  sink  back  again  into  the  general 
soul,  and  God  shall  be  all  in  all.1 

That  is  heathenism  at  its  best:  it  is  very  like 
some  forms  of  Christianity,  and  is  certainly  not  a 
religion  of  which  anyone  need  be  ashamed.  "We 
can  only  know  in  part,  while  we  live  here,  and  we 
may  be  sure  that  when  that  which  is  perfect  is 

1  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  second  edition, 
P.  33i  if. 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    79 

come  Christ  will  own  many  as  his  friends  who  have 
borne  the  Cross  without  hoping  for  the  Crown."1 
For  indeed  the  life  of  a  man  like  Seneca,  trying  to 
serve  Nero  in  the  empire,  which  was  God's 
institution,  and  yet  to  keep  his  soul  clean,  is  truly 
a  picture  of  one  who  tried  to  bear  the  Cross  in  the 
form  in  which  it  was  presented  to  him.2 

Yet  Seneca,  and  the  Stoics  generally,  failed. 
Their  religious  system  proved  to  have  no  real 
vitality  or  power  of  convincing  the  majority  of 
their  hearers.  One  reason  was  because  the  spiritual 
atmosphere  of  Seneca's  religion  was  too  rarefied 
to  be  breathed  by  the  ordinary  man:  it  dealt  too 
much  in  abstractions.  But  even  more  important 
is  that  in  its  presentation  so  much  emphasis  was 
laid  on  conduct  that  it  ceased  to  be  primarily 
religious,  and  became  a  system  of  ethics,  touched 
with  emotion,  and  justified  by  being  brought  into 
connection  with  a  general  view  of  the  universe. 
It  is  very  near  religion,  and  contained  many 
religious  elements,  but  these  were  not  central,  and 
the    more    definitely    religious,    though    far    less 

xDean  Inge  in  Contentio  Veritatis,  p.  103. 

2  Other  views  have  of  course  been  held  about  Seneca's  character: 
no  doubt  he  had  his  failings,  as  indeed  he  admits,  but  I  feel  that 
the  more  anyone  reads  of  Seneca  the  higher  becomes  the  opinion 
formed  of  him. 


80  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

intellectual  and  often  far  less  ethical,  classes  turned 
in  a  different  direction  to  the  so-called  mystery 
religions,  which  also  came  from  the  East,  and 
frequently  contained  a  large  proportion  of  the 
astral  stoicism  of  the  followers  of  Posidonius. 

All  the  many  forms  of  these  Oriental  mystery 
religions  have  certain  points  in  common,  though 
each  has  its  own  distinguishing  features.  Roughly 
speaking,  they  were  cults,  which  narrated  how  at 
some  epoch  of  history  there  had  been  a  great  being, 
either  man  or  god,  who,  while  living  on  the  earth, 
had  found  not  only  a  way  through  the  difficulties 
of  human  life,  but  also,  by  traversing  the  road  of 
suffering,  the  secret  of  a  safe  passage  along  that 
dangerous  journey  which  the  soul  of  man  must 
make  when  it  goes  at  death  from  the  regions  of  this 
world  into  that  which  is  beyond,  and  tries  to  win 
a  path  to  the  divine  realms  of  bliss.  To  their 
followers  they  had  entrusted  this  secret;  so  that 
men,  by  accepting  their  teaching  in  faith,  and  by 
performing  certain  mysterious  acts,  might  follow 
their  example,  and  rise  superior  to  the  misfortunes 
of  life  now,  and  at  death  find  salvation  from  the 
snares  and  onslaughts  of  their  " ghostly  enemies." 

There  was  a  great  number  of  mystery  religions, 
and  the  more  intellectual  of  their  adherents  pro- 
bably thought  that  they  were  all  different  ways  of 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    81 

stating  the  same  truths,  and  of  obtaining  the  same 
advantages.  Moreover  all  of  them  were  united, 
to  a  varying  degree,  which  it  is  not  easy  to  define 
precisely,  with  astral  philosophy.  Possibly  to 
some  minds  the  mysteries  were  nothing  more  than 
divinely  instituted  means  by  which  man  can  more 
fully  and  more  consciously  unite  with  the  purpose 
and  with  the  very  life  of  God.  To  such  minds  the 
mysteries  were  not  inconsistent  with  determinism ; 
they  were  the  means  of  accepting,  not  of  avoiding, 
Fate.  But  probably  they  were  a  minority:  to 
many  minds  determinism  is  an  unattractive  and 
even  horrible  doctrine,  and  the  most  attractive 
appeal  which  any  cult  can  make  is  the  offer  of 
providing  a  means  of  escaping  destiny.  Thus 
there  were  probably  many  who  approached  the 
mysteries  in  the  belief  that  by  linking  themselves 
in  this  way  to  a  Redeemer-God  they  would  be  able 
to  escape  the  decrees  of  the  Fate  which  was 
determined  by  the  stars.  It  was  probably  a  ques- 
tion of  education  and  surroundings  which  decided 
whether  an  initiate  regarded  any  or  all  of  these 
redeemer-gods  as  identical  with  the  Logos,  which 
was  one  of  the  philosophic  descriptions  of  God, 
or  accepted  a  more  definitely  separate  existence 
for  the  gods  or  heroes  of  the  local  mythologies,  such 
as  Tammuz,  Attis,  Isis,  Mithras,  or  Sandan.     It 

6 


82  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

will  be  obvious  that  there  was  room  for  a  great 
number  of  shades  of  thought.  Moreover  though 
the  original  and  best  form  of  the  mysteries  was 
probably  in  sympathy  with  the  desire  of  union  with 
the  astral  powers,  and  the  Destiny  of  which  they 
were  the  agents,  the  longing  to  escape  Fate  led  to 
the  development  of  what  came  to  be  known  as 
Gnosticism,  in  which  the  planets  and  Destiny 
were  regarded  as  wholly  evil  and  hostile  to  man. 
Such  a  theory  is  obviously  really  the  very  reversal 
of  the  creed  of  Seneca :  it  leaves  no  room  for  any 
world-accepting  ethics,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is 
not  really  allied  to  the  world-renouncing  ethic 
of  Jesus,  but  is  a  world-condemning  ethic.  Pro- 
perly understood  the  teaching  of  Jesus  never 
condemns  and  hates  the  world,  and  his  ethic  can 
be  made  complementary  to  a  world-affirming  ethic : 
but  that  is  impossible  for  the  teaching  of  the 
Gnostics.  This  question,  however,  must  be  dealt 
with  later,  for  Gnosticism,  in  a  partially  Christian 
form,  was  one  of  the  most  formidable  enemies  of 
the  Church  in  the  second  century. 

In  whatever  form,  however,  the  mysteries  found 
acceptance,  they  were  genuinely  religious.  On  the 
ethical  side  they  were  weak,  but  they  strove  to 
attain  that  experience  of  union  with  a  higher  reality 
which  is  central  in  religion:  and  with  an  instinct 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    83 

which  seems  to  be  universal  in  humanity  they  felt 
that  this  was  effected  by  means  of  the  common 
facts  of  daily  life  which,  to  the  unseeing  eye,  are 
but  the  processes  of  generation  and  birth,  eating 
and  drinking,  washing  and  dressing,  and,  the  last 
act  of  common  life,  dying;  for  to  the  initiate  all 
became  touched  with  sacramental  splendour  and 
eternal  significance  as  the  outward  visible  signs  of 
the  progress  of  a  Divine  life,  which  was  born  again, 
nourished,  cleansed  and  cared  for,  and  finally 
passed  through  the  last  great  mystery  to  free  and 
untrammelled  expression. 

The  imagery  was  often  confused,  but  it  led  in  the 
mysteries  to  countless  combinations  of  religious 
feasts  and  of  ceremonies  in  which  birth  and  death 
were  symbolically  represented.  Our  knowledge 
of  the  actual  ceremonies  and  liturgies  is  very  small, 
as  almost  all  documentary  evidence  has  been 
destroyed,  but  in  a  famous  papyrus  at  Paris1  we 
have  a  liturgy  which  has  been  copied  and  used  for 

1  Supplement  grec  de  la  Bibliotheque  nationale,  No.  574, 
published  by  Wessely  in  the  Denkeschriften  der  K.  K.  Akademie 
zu  Wien,  Philosoph-hist.  Classe  XXXVI.  (1888),  p.  56  ff.,  and 
afterwards  edited  as  Eine  Mithras  Liturgie,  by  A.  Dieterich  with 
great  learning  and  acumen.  The  view  expressed  in  his  title 
connecting  it  with  Mithras  has  not  met  with  universal  approba- 
tion, and  is  rejected  by  F.  Cumont:  the  point  is  obscure,  and 
those  who  find  the  mysteries  at  the  circumference  rather  than 
the  centre  of  their  studies  will  do  well  to  avoid  too  fixed  an 
opinion. 


84  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

magical  purposes.  The  liturgy  itself  is  probably 
not  earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
but  it  may  be  used  with  some  reserves  to  illustrate 
the  point  of  the  mysteries  at  almost  any  period. 

O  first  source  of  my  being1  .  .  .  [says  the  initiate,] 
if  it  indeed  be  thy  good  will  to  grant  that  I  pass,  from 
the  nature  which  now  binds  me,  to  the  birth  of  immor- 
tality, that  after  this  present  necessity  which  now 
presses  me  down  I  may  enjoy  the  vision  of  the  im- 
mortal beginning  through  the  immortal  spirit  .  .  . 
that  I  may  be  born  again  in  spirit,2  that  I  may  be 
consecrated,  and  the  Holy  Spirit3  may  inspire  me.  .  .  . 

The  Greek  is  not  easy  to  translate  accurately  but 
it  is  clear  that  the  general  sense  is  that  the  initiate 
is  praying  for  a  regeneration  to  eternal  life  in  a  man- 
ner which  illustrates  and  is  illustrated  by  Christian 
practice.  In  the  same  way  in  the  same  document 
the  initiate  says  at  the  end  of  the  service: 

0  Lord,  I  have  been  born  again,  and  depart  that  I 
may  grow,  and  having  grown  I  die;  through  birth 
that  gives  life  I  have  been  born,  and  I  go  to  be  released 
in  death,  as  thou  hast  created,  ordained,  and  instituted 
the  sacrament.4 

1y£ve<ri$  7T/3WT7/  ttJs  ifxrjs  yevi<T€(as. 

2  'iva.  vorjfxaTi  fxeTayevvrjOC}.  iirveiffrj  iv  ifwl  rb  iepbv  Tvedfia. 

4  The  Greek  is  so  full  of  playing  on  the  word  that  it  can  only  be 
translated  very  imperfectly:  "/ci$pie  tt&Xiv  yepbfiepos  airoylyvo^ai 
av^bfuvos,  /ecu  av^7]8el$  TeXeuru),  curd  yevecrews  faoybvov  yevdfjiepos  els 
diroyevecriav  ava\vdels  7rop€VOfxait  cbs  <ri>  Hkthtcls,  cJs  <tv  ivo/xoderrjaas 
Kai  iiroLTjaas  \x.v<JT7\piov." 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    85 

It  is  surely  difficult  to  ignore  the  religious  mystic- 
ism of  these  utterances.  Or,  again,  who  can  refuse 
to  recognize  the  truly  religious  spirit  in  the  prayer 
of  Lucius  to  Isis?1  Yet  though  this  also  belongs  to 
the  second  century  it  almost  certainly  reflects  the 
spirit  of  the  mysteries  of  an  earlier  period. 

Holy  one,  constant  Saviour  of  the  race  of  men,  so 
bountiful  in  cherishing  them,  so  tender  in  the  mother's 
love  which  thou  dost  bestow  on  the  wretched.  Nor 
day  nor  night  nor  shortest  moment  passes  unmarked 
by  thy  benefits  without  the  help  of  thy  protection  for 
men  on  sea  and  land,  without  thy  succouring  hand 
outstretched  to  ward  of!  the  storms  of  life.  Powers 
above  and  powers  below  alike  wait  on  thy  will. 
Thou  makest  the  world  to  revolve,  thou  givest  his 
light  to  the  Sun,  thou  art  ruler  of  the  universe,  thou 
dost  tread  Hell  under  thy  feet.  To  thee  are  due  the 
harmony  of  the  spheres,  the  return  of  the  seasons, 
the  obedience  of  the  elements.  At  thy  bidding  the 
breezes  blow,  the  clouds  gather,  the  seeds  of  the  earth 
bring  forth  their  fruit.  Birds  which  pass  across  the 
sky,  beasts  which  wander  on  the  hills,  serpents  which 
lurk  underground,  the  monsters  which  swim  the  deep, 
all  tremble  before  thy  majesty.  But  I  am  too  feeble 
in  mind  to  speak  thy  praise,  too  poor  in  worldly  goods 
to  pay  thee  sacrifice,  nor  have  I  wealth  in  utterance  to 
tell  forth  all  that  I  feel  of  thy  grandeur.  A  thousand 
lips,  a  thousand  tongues,  and  unbroken  eternity  of 
unfailing  praise  would  not  avail;  yet  what  the  pious 
soul,  poor  though  it  be,  may  do  in  its  humility,  that 

1  Apuleius,  Metamorph.,  xL 


86  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

will  I  perform.  For  ever  more  shall  thy  holy  god- 
head be  treasured  in  the  thoughts  of  my  inmost 
soul. 

Such  was  the  mystery  religion.  It  was  spirit- 
ually strong,  but  it  was  weak  intellectually  and 
ethically ;  it  had  not  cut  itself  free  from  mythology, 
and  its  ethic  was  lower  than  that  of  Seneca  or  of 
the  philosophers  in  general. 

If  we  now  go  on  a  little  further  we  come  to 
another  eddy  in  the  westward-flowing  stream  of 
religion,  the  Jewish  mission,  of  which  the  history 
has  not  yet  been  properly  written,  partly  because 
it  has  been  approached  chiefly  by  Christian  writers, 
who  seem  to  have  thought  that  it  would  detract 
from  the  honour  due  to  God  to  ascribe  any  merit 
to  his  chosen  people,  partly  because  a  knowledge 
of  Semitic  life  and  letters  has  rarely  been  combined 
with  an  equal  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  life 
in  the  empire.  But  for  the  present  purpose  it  is 
sufficient  to  notice  that  on  the  one  hand  the  Jews 
were  learning  quite  as  much  as  teaching:  the 
evidence  of  Philo,  who  regarded  himself  as  a 
moderately  conservative  Jew,  and  of  the  Sibylline 
oracles  shows  that  Judaism  was  moving  very 
rapidly  along  Liberal  lines,  as  we  should  call  it, 
and  giving  up  much  of  the  distinctive  character 
of  Palestinian  Judaism.     Perhaps  for  this  reason 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    87 

it  was  proving  very  attractive  to  the  Graeco- 
Roman  world,  and  the  synagogues  were  drawing  to 
themselves  many  who  desired  a  monotheism  which 
was  clear  and  definitive,  but  not  united  to  so 
uncompromising  a  determinism  as  marked  the 
teaching  of  the  philosophers. 

To  these  three  factors — the  astral  determinism  of 
the  Stoic  philosophers,  the  sacramental  religion  of 
the  mysteries,  and  the  monotheistic  teaching  of  the 
Jewish  synagogues,  the  Christian  mission  added 
itself,  as  another  eddy  in  the  stream  of  cults  from 
the  East.  But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the 
Christian  mission,  or  the  other  forms  of  Eastern 
religion,  succeeded  mainly  by  means  of  converting 
the  convinced  members  of  other  cults.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  in  the  Roman  Empire  the  ancestral 
religion — a  combination  of  Roman  and  Greek  cults 
— had  ceased  to  hold  the  greater  part  of  the  popu- 
lation. The  agricultural  gods  of  the  Latin  race, 
and  deities  of  the  Greek  Olympus,  had  been  silently 
abandoned  by  all  except  their  official  representa- 
tions, and  lived  only  in  popular  phrases  or  in 
poetic  literature;  they  no  longer  represented  the 
religious  life  of  the  community.  Nevertheless  the 
men  of  the  first  century  were  essentially  religious ; 
they  were  constantly  seeking  not  so  much  after 
God  as  after  an  adequate  theology  and  satisfying 


88  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

worship,  to  stimulate  the  spiritual  life  of  which 
they  were  conscious,  and  express  the  experience  of 
God  which  they  enjoyed.  Their  heritage  from  the 
past  was  failing  them  and  they  turned  for  help  to 
the  Oriental  cults  which  were  streaming  into  the 
empire.  Yet  perhaps  not  many  accepted  them 
without  reservation,  and  convinced  and  whole- 
hearted adherents  of  any  form  of  religion  were 
few  in  comparison  with  the  large  numbers  of 
"honorary  members  of  all  religions. "  These  were 
inclined  to  take  an  intelligent  and  sympathetic 
interest  in  every  cult,  but  to  see  the  mixture  of 
merit  and  demerit  in  each  clearly  enough  to  dislike 
the  limitations  of  an  exclusive  membership  in  any. 
In  every  age  all  growing  forms  of  religion  have 
been  surrounded  by  a  wide  circle  of  these  "  hon- 
orary members. "  They  have  spread  by  absorbing 
them  more  and  more  into  the  central  body,  and 
during  the  period  of  vigorous  youth  the  preachers 
of  each  cult  have  done  their  best  to  meet  the 
requirements  of  their  "honorary  members"  in  the 
matters  of  institutional  life  or  theological  expres- 
sion, because  they  have  felt  that  these  things  are 
subordinate  to  the  Divine  fire  which  it  is  their 
privilege  to  hand  on,  and  that  it  is  the  living  flame, 
not  the  torch  carrying  it,  which  is  important.  It 
is  more  or  less  of  an  accident  that  the  circle  of 


The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire    89 

this  kind  which  surrounded  the  Jewish  mission 
— the  "God-fearers"  (oc  aegfyevot  t^v  ©srfv) —  is 
that  best  known  to  us,  for  no  doubt  a  similar 
circle  surrounded  all  the  other  Eastern  cults.  But 
it  is  in  any  case  clear  that  the  God-fearers,  the 
honorary  members  of  the  Synagogue,  were  the 
most  frequent  converts  to  Christianity.  The 
Christian  missionaries  from  Antioch  used  habitu- 
ally to  preach  in  the  Jewish  synagogues  so  long 
as  they  were  permitted,  and  their  teaching,  which 
avoided  the  circumcision  and  the  ritual  law,  so 
distasteful  to  the  Gentile  mind,  found  a  ready 
hearing  among  the  God-fearers.  It  is  also  easy 
to  see  that  this  did  not  tend  to  soften  the  attitude 
of  the  Jew  to  the  Christian.  It  is  bad  enough  to 
find  that  a  preacher  whom  you  have  allowed  to 
speak  to  your  flock  is  a  heretic,  it  is  infinitely 
worse  if  he  proves  more  attractive  than  yourself  to 
those  whose  conversion  had  seemed  to  be  almost 
accomplished. 

Thus  the  history  of  the  progress  of  Christianity 
in  the  empire  soon  became  that  of  the  conversion 
of  God-fearers,  and  Catholic  Christianity  is  the 
outcome  of  the  influence  upon  one  another  of  the 
Christian  missionaries  with  their  primarily  Jewish 
and  eschatological-ethical  teaching,  and  the  "  God- 
fearing"  public  which  brought  with  it  a  great 


90  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

portion  of  the  world-accepting  ethic,  the  Stoic 
philosophy,  and  the  sacramental  mysticism  which 
were  to  so  large  an  extent  part  of  the  intellectual 
current  coin  of  the  first  and  second  centuries. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  ANTIOCHENE  MISSION  AND  EARLY  GENTILE 
CHRISTIANITY 

The  Acts  and  Pauline  Epistles— The  Development  of  the 
Church— Judaizers  and  Hellenizers— Greek  and  Jewish 
Views  of  Salvation— St.  Paul— Christology— Baptism— The 
Eucharist. 

FROM  the  time  when  the  establishment  of  the 
Antiochene  and  Jerusalem  missions  ensured 
the  passage  of  Christianity  into  the  Roman 
Empire  its  history  may  roughly  be  divided  into 
two  parts — the  growing  divergence  between  the 
two  missions,  and  the  mutual  influence  upon  each 
other  of  the  missionaries  and  the  " God-fearers,' ' 
which  produced  the  rapid  development  of  thought 
and  practice  from  which  the  Catholic  Church 
finally  emerged. 

We  have,  however,  to  remember  that  our  sources 
of  information  are  very  limited.  The  Acts  and  the 
Epistles  are  all  that  we  possess;  they  only  give  us 
glimpses  into  the  development  of  events,  and 
confine  themselves  to  the  spread  of  Christianity 

91 


92  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

in  Asia  Minor  and  Europe  under  the  leadership  of 
St.  Paul.  It  is  certain  that  there  must  have  been 
other  missionaries,  both  from  the  Antioch  and 
Jerusalem  schools,  but  we  knew  nothing  about 
them.  Who,  for  instance,  founded  the  Church 
at  Rome,  or  at  Alexandria,  and  under  what 
circumstances? 

Moreover,  our  knowledge  is  limited  not  only 
by  the  extent,  but  also  by  the  special  purposes  of 
the  writers  of  the  two  extant  sources.  This  is,  of 
course,  obviously  true  of  the  Pauline  epistles,  even 
though  the  fact  has  often  been  overlooked.  There 
has  been  a  tendency  to  regard  these  epistles  as  a 
body  of  theological  literature  intended  for  the  pur- 
pose of  explaining  the  doctrines  of  Christianity; 
but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  if  we  read  the  Epistles 
without  presupposition,  it  is  at  once  clear  that 
they  are  controversial  letters  written  not  to  de- 
scribe the  central  teaching  of  Christianity,  but  to 
discuss  points  as  to  which  Christians  were  not  in 
agreement  among  themselves.  The  central  doc- 
trines are  not  argued  about;  they  are  the  basis 
for  discussion;  and  thus,  though  it  sounds  a 
paradox,  if  we  wish  to  reconstruct  them  we  must 
not  take  the  points  which  St.  Paul  discusses  at 
length,  but  those  which  he  assumes  as  ground 
common  to  him  and  to  his  adversaries,  and  there- 


Early  Gentile  Christianity  93 

fore  states  in  a  few  short  sentences.  It  is  obvious 
that  this  cannot  always  be  done  with  any  attempt 
at  completeness,  and  it  is  fortunate  that  we  possess 
in  the  Acts  material  with  which  to  supplement  and 
correct  our  investigations  into  the  Epistles.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  turn  to  inquire  into  the 
controversies  of  the  primitive  church  rather  than 
into  its  central  doctrines  the  Epistles  are  far  more 
important  than  the  Acts,  because  in  Acts  a  veil 
seems  to  be  drawn  over  many  sides  of  the  early 
disputes. 

Who  the  writer  of  the  Acts  was,  whether  he  was 
St.  Luke,  the  companion  of  St.  Paul,  or  someone 
who  used  Lucan  material,  is  probably  an  insoluble 
question.  But  in  any  case  it  is  probable  that  the 
book  was  written  shortly  before  the  end  of  the 
first  century, x  and  that  the  writer  intended  to  per- 
form for  Christianity  the  same  office  as  Josephus 
did  for  the  Jews.  He  was  writing  in  order  to 
influence  Roman  opinion,  and  selected  his  events 
and  the  form  of  his  narrative  so  as  best  to  show 
what  had  been  the  historical  relationship  of  the 
Church  to  the  Jews,  and  to  the  Roman  authorities. 

x  An  earlier  date  has  been  recently  suggested  by  A.  von  Har- 
nack,  but  valuable  though  his  contributions  to  the  study  of  the 
Lucan  writings  have  been,  he  has  not  convinced  many  of  his 
German  colleagues  that  the  earlier  date  is  right,  and  I  do  not 
think  that  his  arguments  will  ultimately  prove  acceptable. 


94  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

He  therefore  discussed  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  Hellenistic  Christianity  as  contrasted  with 
the  Jewish  Christianity  of  the  church  of  Jeru- 
salem,1 but  did  not  say  anything  about  the 
quarrels  which  took  place  between  the  different 
parties  within  the  Hellenistic  movement.  Thus 
although  it  is  possible  to  obtain  a  general  picture 
of  the  main  features  of  early  Hellenistic  Christian- 
ity by  using  the  Acts  and  Epistles  together,  the 
details  are  often  blurred,  and  any  exact  recon- 
structions are  consequently  doubtful,  even  though 
they  must  sometimes  be  made  to  serve  as  working 
hypotheses. 

The  most  important  characteristics  of  this 
nascent  Gentile  Christianity  can  best  be  seen  by  a 
summary  description  of  the  stages  which  preceded 
it,  and  of  its  ultimate  form. 

The  first  stage  was  the  ministry  of  Jesus :  Christi- 
anity2 meant  at  that  time  the  belief  that  he  was 

1  Acts  is  clearly  concerned  chiefly  with  Hellenistic  Christianity; 
but  the  writer  is  also  anxious  to  prove  that  the  Church  of  Gentile 
Christians  is  the  true  successor  not  only  of  the  Church  of  Jeru- 
salem but  also  of  Israel  itself.  The  Christians,  not  the  Jews,  are 
the  true  inheritors  of  the  promises  of  prophecy,  which  the  Jews 
had  misunderstood.  In  this  respect  Acts  prepares  the  way  for 
the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  which,  while  claiming  the  text  of  the 
Jewish  scriptures  for  Christianity,  ascribes  the  exegesis  of  the 
Jews  to  the  operation  of  the  devil. 

2  The  use  of  the  word  is,  of  course,  an  anachronism,  but  it  has 
the  excuse  of  convenience. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity  95 

right  in  announcing  the  speedy  coming  of  the 
kingdom,  and  in  demanding  repentance. 

The  second  stage  was  that  of  the  Church  in 
Jerusalem;  it  added  to  the  belief  of  the  preceding 
stage  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah  who  should  come. 
It  was  not  otherwise  different,  though  the  addition 
made  is,  of  course,  considerable,  and  from  it 
emanated  the  Jerusalem  mission.  It  did  not 
break  radically  with  the  Law  or  with  Judaism. 

The  third  stage  is  the  Antiochene  mission, 
which  in  turn  differed  from  the  preceding  only  in 
its  altered  relation  to  the  Law  and  to  Judaism, 
opening  the  door  to  Gentile  converts  without 
asking  that  they  should  accept  circumcision  or 
the  ceremonial  law. 

The  fourth  stage  is  Gentile  Christianity  which 
extended  the  Christological  belief  concerning 
Jesus  so  far  as  to  regard  him  as  the  centre  of  a  cult. 
It  therefore  ascribed  a  divine  nature  to  him, ■  and 
interpreted  Baptism  and  the  commemoration  of 
the  Last  Supper  as  the  equivalents  of  the  heathen 
mysteries. 

This  bald  enumeration  of  the  features  of  the 
four  stages  is  of  course  misleading  when  given 

1  That  is,  of  course,  not  a  Jewish  thought ;  however  exalted  the 
Messiah  may  have  been,  he  was  not  divine.  The  strict  mono- 
theism of  the  Jews  made  them  of  all  ancient  nations  the  least 
likely  to  ascribe  divinity  to  a  king. 


96  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

without  further  explanation,  and  it  draws  unduly 
sharp  lines  of  demarcation,  but  it  serves  the 
purpose  of  showing  that  the  main  points  of  differ- 
ences between  Gentile  and  primitive1  Christianity 
are  concerned  with  the  development  that  made  the 
Christ  the  centre  of  the  worship  of  the  community 
and  thus  necessitated  the  growth  of  a  high  Christ- 
ology  and  the  transmutation  of  the  rite  of  Baptism 
and  the  Last  Supper  into  sacraments  with  the 
same  soteriological  importance  as  attached  to  the 
heathen  mysteries. 

But  these  points  were  not  yet  the  storm-centres 
of  controversy  in  the  early  days  of  the  Antiochene 
mission,  and  before  discussing  Christology  and 
sacraments  it  is  necessary  to  spend  a  little  time 
on  considering  the  course  of  the  development  of 
the  history,  and  the  nature  rather  than  the  details 
of  the  disputes2  which  were  central  in  the  days  of 
St.  Paul's  missionary  work. 

Although  it  is  convenient,  and  not  inaccurate, 
to  describe  the  several  stages  just  sketched  as 
first,  second,  and  third,  it  is  of  course  obvious  that 

1  Using  "primitive"  to  mean  the  Christianity  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  and  of  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem  before  the  rise  of  Hellenistic 
Christianity  at  Antioch. 

1  The  details  are  often  lost  beyond  hope  of  recovery,  and  to  dis- 
cuss them  here  would  unnecessarily  obscure  an  already  sufficiently 
complicated  question  by  the  introduction  of  many  technical  and 
critical  problems. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity  97 

the  end  of  one  was  not  coincident  with  the  begin- 
ning of  its  successor.  We  know  very  little  about 
the  Christians — if  we  may  use  the  phrase — who 
after  the  crucifixion  perpetuated  the  public  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  without  change,  but  on  general 
principles  we  may  fairly  assume  that  they  must 
have  existed,  even  if  not  for  many  years.  Such 
disciples  would  continue  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  but 
would  not  regard  him  as  the  Messiah,  unless  they 
came  into  contact  with  some  of  the  inner  circle 
who  knew  the  secret.  We  cannot  suppose  that 
all  the  many  original  disciples  of  Jesus  went  up 
with  him  to  Jerusalem,  or,  if  they  did  so,  returned 
there  after  the  crucifixion.  But  it  is  also  improb- 
able that  they  all  stayed  permanently  in  Galilee ; 
some  at  least  may  have  emigrated  to  the  great 
towns  of  the  empire.  It  is  not  impossible — I 
think  it  is  probable — that  this  is  the  true  ex- 
planation of  the  curious  stories  of  the  disciples  in 
Ephesus  who  seem  to  have  been  ignorant  of  the 
gift  of  the  Spirit  until  the  coming  of  St.  Paul,  and 
of  Apollos  who  knew  about  Jesus,1  but  "only 
the  baptism  of  John,"  and  apparently  did  not 
preach  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah  until  he  had 
been  instructed  by  Aquila  and  Priscilla.     Their 

1  In  the  Earlier  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  I  adopted  a  different 
explanation  of  this  difficult  passage,  but  I  think  that  I  was  wrong. 


98  The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

conversion  by  St.  Paul  and  Aquila  is  no  doubt 
typical  of  the  fate  of  the  disciples  of  the  first 
period  who  had  emigrated  to  the  cities  of  the 
empire.  They  were  absorbed  by  one  or  other  of 
the  chief  Christian  missions,  and  for  this  reason 
the  survival  of  the  first  stage  of  Christianity  has 
left  very  few  marks  on  Christian  tradition.  Pro- 
bably, too,  the  majority  of  such  disciples  remained 
in  Galilee  and  were,  to  use  a  modern  phrase,  in 
communion  with  the  Jewish  Church,  attending 
the  worship  of  the  synagogues  in  Galilee,  think- 
ing of  the  days  of  that  strange  " Revival"  when 
they  listened  to  the  preaching  of  Jesus,  and  hoping 
that  if  they  followed  his  teaching  and  suffered  to 
the  end  they  would  win  their  lives  in  the  kingdom 
of  which  he  had  foretold  the  advent.  St.  Luke 
was  probably  wrong  in  fact  when  he  omitted  the 
mention  of  such  followers,  and  made  Jerusalem 
the  sole  centre  of  Christianity  after  the  crucifixion, 
but  the  value- judgment  which  his  treatment 
implies  was  correct,  for  this  type  of  disciple  soon 
ceased  to  exist,  and  had  no  permanent  influence 
on  the  development  of  the  Church. 

The  relations  subsisting  between  the  second  and 
third  and  between  the  third  and  fourth  stages,  or 
in  other  words  between  the  Antiochene  mission — 
which  for  us  means  St.  Paul — and  on  the  one  hand 


Early  Gentile  Christianity  99 

the  Jerusalem  mission,  and  on  the  other  nascent 
Gentile  Christianity,  is  much  more  important 
and  complicated.  It  is  above  all  necessary  to 
emphasise  that  the  epistles  give  no  countenance 
to  the  view,  prevalent  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
which  depicts  them  as  representing  the  controversy 
as  a  simple  struggle  between  Judaism  or  Judaizing 
Christians  and  St.  Paul.  In  his  own  writings  St. 
Paul  appears  as  standing  between  two  extremes: 
on  one  side  of  him  the  Jerusalem  "  Judaizers" 
argued  that  Christianity  was  the  child  of  Judaism, 
and  that  the  law  was  essentially  binding  on  con- 
verts, and  on  the  other  "  Hellenizing  "  converts 
sought  to  read  into  the  teaching  of  the  Antiochene 
mission  doctrines  more  in  agreement  with  their 
own  desires  than  with  the  pronouncements  of  St. 
Paul.  Even  though  some  leaders  of  the  latter 
movement  may  have  been  Jews  by  birth,  they 
were  not  so  in  spirit ;  they  had  given  up  the  Law, 
and  in  the  reaction  had  become  more  Greek  than 
the  Greeks.  They  argued  for  entire  freedom; 
Christianity  was  a  religion  of  freedom  and  of  the 
Spirit,  and  it  must  know  nothing  of  restrictions 
which  would  check  the  most  complete  liberty  of 
conduct.  "All  things  are  lawful"  was  their 
party  cry,  and  it  is  this  type  of  Christianity  which 
is  controverted  in  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians. 


ioo        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

It  is  thus  as  standing  in  the  middle  between 
"Judaizer"  and  "Hellenizer"  that  St.  Paul 
appears,  and  this  probably  represents  the  true 
position  of  the  Antiochene  mission  as  a  whole. 

As  against  the  Judaizers  he  argued  that 
righteousness — the  antithesis  to  sin — which  would 
admit  men  to  the  kingdom  of  God  and  was  the 
basis  of  salvation  from  the  wrath  to  come  was 
dependent  on  faith, x  not  on  the  works  of  the  law. 

As  against  the  other — the  Hellenizing — party  he 
argued  that  even  if  it  were  true  that  "all  things 
were  lawful"  the  ethical  and  moral  requirements 
of  Christianity  were  binding.  The  highest  ethical 
system2  in  all  its  strength  was  emphasised  as  the 
necessary  obligation,  though  not  as  the  previ- 
ous condition  of  membership  in  the  Christian 
community. 

To  attempt  to  follow  the  details  of  the  triangular 
controversy  thus  revealed  by  the  Epistles  is  scarcely 

1  To  some  Protestant  writers  there  is  an  inconsistency  between 
this  emphasis  on  faith  and  the  sacramental  view  of  baptism ;  but 
no  Catholic  ever  felt  this  antithesis,  and  in  this  respect  Ca- 
tholicism is  primitive.  Faith,  not  the  works  of  the  law,  was 
regarded  as  a  necessary  condition  of  obtaining  righteousness,  but 
baptism  was  the  means. 

2  To  ask  whether  these  ethics  were  those  of  the  Synagogue  or 
of  the  Stoa  is  somewhat  useless;  at  the  best,  Synagogue  and  Stoa 
approached  very  nearly  to  one  another,  and  it  is  not  important — 
for  the  present  purpose — to  inquire  into  their  relative  obligations 
to  one  another. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         101 

desirable.  Many  reconstructions  have  been  made ; 
none  are  wholly  satisfactory,  because  we  have 
really  not  more  than  a  series  of  glimpses  at  the 
facts.  Luke,  who  might  have  told  us,  preferred 
to  be  silent;  and  it  is  impossible  fully  to  connect 
all  the  fragments  of  evidence  in  the  Epistles, 
except  by  an  unjustifiable  use  of  the  imagination. 
But  we  may  profitably  ask  what  was  the  main 
difference  between  the  two  sets  of  opponents  whom 
St.  Paul  had  to  face?  It  was  two-fold :  intellectual 
and  psychological. 

The  Greek  and  the  Jew  were  divided  from  one 
another  by  education  and  general  intellectual 
attitude,  and  this  affected  the  form  in  which  they 
looked  at  the  promise  of  "salvation"  made  them 
by  religion.  Both  desired  it,  but  they  formed 
different  pictures  of  the  benefits  conferred  by  it. 
The  Jew  expected  primarily  security  from  the 
impending  wrath  of  God,  and  that  he  would  belong 
to  the  kingdom  of  God,  when  it  should  come. 
That  was  the  object  of  his  hopes  and  his  prayers; 
and  it  was  the  assurance  of  that  which  he  believed 
that  he  found  in  his  religion. 

The  Greek,  on  the  other  hand,  meant  that  he 
wished  to  feel  safe  in  his  personal  life,  not  only 
safe  now,  but  safe  after  death;  to  him  the  main 
thing  was  the  assurance  that  he  had  obtained  a 


102        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

personal  salvation  which  not  only  gave  him  release 
from  the  troubles  and  sins  of  this  present  world, 
but  also  would  conduct  him  after  his  death  to 
what  we,  in  ordinary  language,  should  call  heaven. 
That  was  the  point  of  view  of  the  Greeks  at 
Corinth,  and  if  we  read  I  Cor.  xv.  we  see  that  St. 
Paul  was  standing  between  the  Jew  who  believed 
in  the  coming  resurrection  as  the  only  way  in 
which  the  dead  can  share  in  the  kingdom,  and  the 
Greek  who  asked  what  was  the  purpose,  if  he  had 
already  obtained  eternal  life,  of  talking  about 
a  resurrection.  He  had — so  he  argued — eternal 
life  already,  and  when  he  died  he  would  merely 
pass  to  a  higher  state. 

St.  Paul  seems  to  have  appreciated  the  Greeks' 
point  of  view,  and  to  understand  the  objection 
that  they  felt  to  a  resurrection  of  flesh  and  blood, 
but  he  was,  after  all,  a  Jew,  and  the  belief  in  a 
resurrection  was  an  essential  part  of  his  eschato- 
logy.  For  a  time  he  seems  to  have  succeeded  in 
maintaining  a  doctrine  of  a  resurrection  which 
was  not  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  in  the  end  the 
Catholic  Church  came  to  a  different  conclusion. 
This,  however,  is  so  important  a  part  of  the  follow- 
ing stage  of  the  development  of  Christian  thought 
that  it  will  be  more  suitably  discussed  as  a  whole  in 
a  later  chapter;  it  is  at  present  sufficient  to  em- 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         103 

phasize  that  the  divergence  between  Greek  and 
Jew  was  due  to  varying  intellectual  standpoints 
producing  a  corresponding  difference  in  the  form 
given  to  the  anticipation  of  a  future  life. 

Besides  this  intellectual  and  educational  differ- 
ence between  the  Jew  and  the  Greek1  there  was 
also  a  psychological  difference.  Both  looked  for 
help  from  their  religions,  but  they  wished  for 
differing  forms  of  help. 

The  Jew  desired  an  answer  to  the  question: 
"What  am  I  to  do?"  He  required  a  code  of  life 
and  of  action;  he  would  have  thoroughly  agreed 
with  Matthew  Arnold  that  conduct  was  three 
parts  of  life;  in  fact  he  probably  thought  that  it 
was  the  whole  of  it ;  and  he  wanted  to  know  how  he 
was  to  act.  He  felt  that  his  own  action  was  often 
wrong;  that,  left  to  himself,  he  was  constantly 
making  mistakes ;  and  that  he  needed  guidance  and 
support.  Therefore  it  was  in  no  mean  or  unworthy 
spirit  that  he  required  a  religion  giving  him  a  law 
to  tell  him  definitely  what  to  do. 

It  is  interesting,  in  looking  over  the  whole 
stretch  of  Christian  history,  to  see  how  the  neces- 
sity of  meeting  the  needs  of  this  type  of  nature  was 

*  Jewish  and  Greek  are,  of  course,  only  roughly  true  designa- 
tions: the  distinction  is  really  psychological,  and  there  were  many 
"psychological  Jews"  of  Greek  nationality,  and  "psychological 
Greeks"  of  Jewish  blood. 


104        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

found  too  strong  for  any  preconceived  ideas  of 
the  early  Christians.  Even  when  they  thought 
that  they  were  most  definitely  abandoning  the  idea 
of  a  law,  events  were  steadily  leading  them  back 
to  the  fact  that  they  could  not  in  the  end  neglect 
the  requirements  of  the  Jewish  type,  because  the 
man  who  requires  his  religion  to  tell  him  what  to 
do  is  not  to  be  found  among  Jews  alone.  He 
belongs  to  a  psychological  type  which  embraces 
more  than  half  mankind,  and  therefore  in  the 
end,  in  spite  of  the  breach  with  Judaism,  all 
churches  have  been  forced  to  produce  codes  of 
conduct — those  codes,  partly  written,  partly 
unwritten,  which  we  describe  as  Christian  morals, 
Christian  ethics,  or  Christian  conduct;  and  some 
churches,  and  still  more  some  individual  Chris- 
tians, have  gone  so  far  in  the  process  of  defining 
exactly  what  a  Christian  may  do  and  may  not  do, 
that  as  a  matter  of  principle  there  is  not  any 
serious  difference  between  their  position  and  that 
of  legalistic  Judaism.  That  it  should  be  so  was 
psychologically  inevitable. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Greek  did  not  ask, 
"What  am  I  to  do?"  but,  "What  am  I  to  be?" 
He  wished  to  become — not  to  do — something 
different.  He  did  not  feel  so  acutely  that  what  he 
did  was  wrong  or  unsatisfactory,  or  even  if  he  did 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         105 

so  it  did  not  disturb  him  very  much.  What  dis- 
tressed him  was  the  feeling  that  his  very  being 
was  corrupt,  and  that  there  was  something  radi- 
cally perverted  about  his  whole  existence.  He 
said  in  effect  that  he  wanted  a  religion  to  help 
him  to  become  a  new  being  and  to  change  his  na- 
ture and,  speaking  in  the  language  of  the  heathen 
mysteries  referred  to  in  the  preceding  chapter,  he 
expressed  the  longing  to  be  "born  again. "  To  be 
"born  again"  was  the  technical  phrase  for  initi- 
ation in  the  heathen  mysteries,  but  it  was  much 
more  than  a  reference  to  mere  ceremonial;  it  rather 
represented  a  type  of  real  psychical  experience. 

What  is  really  important  is  that  these  Greek 
converts  were  convinced  that  by  their  religion 
they  did  truly  become  something  different.  It  is 
one  of  the  facts  which  we  have  to  take  as  beyond 
dispute  that  the  Greek  who  was  converted  to 
Christianity  by  St.  Paul  did  believe  that  he  actu- 
ally had  obtained  a  changed  nature.  We  may 
criticise  or  reject  any  particular  explanation  of 
the  fact,  and  we  may  even  deny,  if  we  see  fit,  that 
the  Greek  was  right  in  his  belief;  but  we  cannot 
dispute  the  fact  that  the  belief  itself  was  unwaver- 
ing. 

There  was  thus  a  real  basis  of  religious  experi- 
ence  to   the   Greek  position,   but   it   often   was 


io6         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

accompanied  by  a  certain  moral  laxity,  just  as 
the  Jewish  position  was  accompanied  by  a  certain 
spiritual  hardness.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
neither  Jew  nor  Greek  understood  or  valued  each 
other's  position;  and  St.  Paul's  arguments  are 
only  to  be  appreciated  when  we  perceive  that  he  is 
constantly  standing  between  the  two.  Psycholo- 
gically, he  was  more  Greek  than  Jew;  he  had  him- 
self known  the  desire  for  rebirth,  and  felt  that  it 
was  this  which  was  central  in  his  own  religion,  so 
that  he  protested  indignantly  against  the  Jew  who 
wished  to  subject  all  men  to  the  bondage  of  the 
law,  and  viewed  religion  primarily  as  a  guide  to 
conduct.  But  by  birth  he  was  a  Jew;  he  knew  the 
value  of  morality  and  its  permanent  union — as 
distinct  from  confusion — with  religion,  and  he 
protested  with  equal  indignation  against  the 
Greek  who  combined  spiritual  experience  with  lax 
moral  conduct  and  did  not  feel  the  distinction 
between  freedom  from  bondage  and  licence  to 
immorality. 

Up  to  a  point  his  efforts  were  successful.  But 
the  conflict  was  not  finished.  "Greek"  and 
"Jew"  stand  not  so  much  for  national  as  for 
psychological   differences,1   and   Christianity   has 

1  It  would,  of  course,  be  absurd  to  suggest  that  every  one 
belongs  to  one  type  or  the  other.     Most  of  us  in  practice  belong 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         107 

been  successful  in  providing  a  world-religion  only 
so  far  as  it  has  produced  a  system  capable  of 
meeting  the  demands  both  of  "Jews"  who  wish 
to  know  what  they  should  do,  and  of  ''Greeks" 
who  seek  for  a  rebirth  to  a  better   life.      Much, 
however,  of  the  unending  friction  in  Christian 
life  has  been  due  to  the  insistence  of  those  who 
belong  to  one  type  on  their  supposed  right  to 
legislate  for  those  belonging  to  the  other,  and  to 
their  continual  illusion  that  all  good  Christians 
ought  to  have  the  same  kind  of  experience.     Es- 
pecially is  it  true  that  the  man  of  the  Greek  type 
who  has  wished  to  obtain  a  new  nature,  and  has 
felt  the  assurance  that  he  has  obtained  it,  has 
always  considered  there  must  be  something  wrong 
with  the  man  who  feels  neither  that  desire  nor 
that  assurance,  but  nevertheless  thinks  that  he, 
in  his  own  way,  has  received  from  his  religion  what 
he  wanted,  and,  to  use  the  old  phrase,  that  he  also 
is  a  child  of  God,  though  perhaps  by  birth  rather 
than  by  rebirth.     All  through  Christian  history 
there  has  been  an  unintelligent  friction  between 
these  two  types,  and  it  would  be  one  of  the  greatest 

to  a  mixed  type.  But  unfortunately  in  writing  it  is  not  possible 
to  do  more  than  deal  with  strongly  marked  characteristics,  and, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  probably  true  that  the  great  heroes  of 
religions  have  as  a  rule  been  pure  examples  of  one  or  the  other 
type. 


108        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

blessings  if  the  study  of  scientific  psychology,1  for 
that  is  what  is  really  needed,  could  lead  religious 
men  to  realize  that  we  are  not  all  made  alike; 
that  neither  our  needs  nor  our  experiences  are 
always  the  same  as  those  of  our  neighbours,  but 
that  theirs  are  not,  for  that  reason,  less  real  or  less 
valid  than  our  own. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  controversy  between 
Paul  and  the  Judaizers  should  not  have  touched 
the  questions  of  Christology  or  Baptism;  the  fact 
seems  to  be  that  on  these  subjects  controversy 
arose  somewhat  later,  and  that  the  Antiochene 
mission  was  much  more  Jewish  in  its  theological 
conceptions  than  some  of  the  converted  God- 
fearers  who  helped  to  form  the  next  generation. 
With  regard  both  to  Christology  and  Baptism 
the  situation  was  probably  saved  by  the  fact 
that  in  the  one  case  language,  and  in  the  other 
custom,  was  in  so  far  ambiguous  that  Jews  and 
Gentile  God-fearers  were  able  to  adopt  the  same 
usage,  though  with  differing  interpretations. 

This  is  especially  clear  with  regard  to  Christo- 
logy; the  Christians  of  Jerusalem  and  Antioch 
agreed  in  saying  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ — the 

1  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  refer  to  the  epoch-making  work  of 
W.  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  but,  well  known 
though  the  book  is,  its  practical  application  has  rarely  been 
attempted. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         109 

Messiah.  But  that  is  by  no  means  the  simple 
statement  which  it  seems;  it  implies  the  whole 
Jewish  apparatus  of  thought  as  to  the  kingdom  of 
God,  and  the  Messiah  who  was  to  reign  in  it.  It 
was  a  natural  and  intelligible  statement  to  people 
who  accepted  the  Jewish  position.  But  it  was 
really  meaningless  to  the  Greek  world,  and  Christ 
(Messiah)  rapidly  became  a  proper  name — as  it 
has  remained  ever  since,  for  all  except  theologians. 
The  word  which  the  Greeks  preferred  to  use 
was  "Lord"  (xuptoq),  and  this  was  the  means  of 
opening  the  way  for  a  development  of  thought, 
without  causing  an  open  rupture  with  the  original 
Jewish  stock. 

To  a  Greek  a  "Lord"  in  the  theological  sense 
was  divine.  The  phrase  was  used  of  the  emperors, 
and  was  especially  common  in  connection  with  the 
"redeeming  Gods"  of  the  Oriental  cults.  At  the 
same  time  in  a  non-theological  sense,  and  especially 
in  the  vocative,  it  was  a  mere  title  of  respect. J 

The  result  was  that  the  use  of  "  Lord  "  was  a  long 
step  towards  the  claim  of  divinity  for  Jesus,  and 
was  doubtless  very  soon  so  interpreted  by  Greeks 
and  God-fearing  converts,  but  it  was  not  a  direct 
infringement  on  the  monotheism  of  the  Jew,  such 

1  In  which  sense  it  survives  now  in  modern  Greek  as  the 
ordinary  equivalent  of  "Mr."  or,  in  the  vocative,  "Sir." 


no        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

as  would  have  been  the  attribution  to  Jesus  of  the 
title  of  God.  Thus  St.  Paul  freely  calls  Jesus 
"Lord,"  and  even  regards  the  use  of  this  title  as 
the  distinctive  mark  of  a  good  spirit  in  a  prophet, 
but  he  never  calls  Jesus  "  God, "  and  distinguishes1 
between  Heathen,  who  have  "Gods  many  and 
Lords  many,"  and  Christians,  who  have  "one 
God — the  Father — and  one  Lord — Jesus  Christ." 
It  is  extremely  probable  that  if  a  Jew  had  been 
asked  whether  this  infringed  on  monotheism  he 
would  have  said  "No,"  after  a  little  hesitation; 
while,  if  a  Greek  had  been  asked  whether  it  con- 
ceded the  divinity  of  Jesus,  he  would  have  said 
"Yes" — also  after  a  little  hesitation.  The  fact, 
of  course,  is  that  the  Jew  and  the  Greek  had 
radically  different  ideas  of  God.  To  the  Greek  the 
ascription  of  divinity  to  the  Emperor  was  rational, 
and  not  really  inconsistent  with  philosophic 
monotheism;  he  believed  in  one  God,  who  was 
manifested  as  many  gods.  Deism  was  repugnant 
to  his  system  of  thought,  but  a  kind  of  monistic 
Pantheism  he  could  tolerate,  and  while  intellectu- 
ally convinced  that  God  is  One  he  was  prepared  to 
worship  God  in  many  manifestations,  as  "all  in 
all. "  To  the  Jew,  on  the  other  hand,  monotheism 
meant  the  affirmation  that  there  is  One  God,  which 

1  I  Cor.  viii.,  5/. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         in 

is  not  quite  the  same  thing  as  that  God  is  One. 
He  was  trembling  on  the  verge  of  Deism,  and  often 
passed  right  over  to  completely  Deistic  thought. 
The  angels,  and  the  Messiah,  might  be  super- 
natural beings,  belonging  to  the  heavenly  world, 
but  they  were  not  God,  even  though  God  might 
have  appointed  them  as  Lords.  They  might  be 
the  sons  of  God,  but  the  son  is  not  the  same 
as  his  father — there  is  but  one  God,  who  has  said : 
"Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  but  me. "  Thus 
the  point  which  the  Jew  emphasized  was  the 
majesty  and  uniqueness  of  God,  while  the  Greek 
laid  stress  on  the  comprehensiveness  of  God — the 
fact  that  he  must  be  looked  upon  as  all-embracing, 
and  "all  in  all."  In  this  respect  the  "Lord" 
terminology  of  the  Antiochene  mission  as  revealed 
by  the  Epistles  and  Acts,  was  admirably  fitted  to 
serve  as  a  common  language  for  both  parties. 

It  was  possible  for  a  Christian  of  the  Antiochene 
mission,  who  dissented  from  Jerusalem  in  that  he 
desired  to  see  the  way  of  life  made  open  to  the 
Gentiles  without  their  sharing  in  the  responsibili* 
ties  of  the  law,  which  was  the  special  privilege  of 
Israel,  to  believe  sincerely  that  he  was  representing 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "Messiah"— to  Greek 
ears  so  unintelligible — by  saying  that  Jesus  was 
the  Lord.     But  to  a  convert  from  the  Gentile  world 


ii2        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  word  brought  with  it  all  the  connotations  of 
heathen  theological  language.  To  him  it  meant 
the  recognition  of  Jesus  as  the  supernatural  centre 
of  a  cult.  This  cult  indeed,  was  essentially  relig- 
ious rather  than  theological,  and  spiritual  rather 
than  intellectual.  It  was  inspired  by  a  conscious- 
ness of  a  common  experience  of  new  life,  which 
was  the  dividing  line  between  it  and  the  rest  of 
the  world;  its  members  had  gained  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit,  and  henceforth  this  Spirit  was  the  directing 
power  in  their  lives.  In  the  language  of  their  day 
they  expressed  this  by  saying  that  the  Spirit  was 
the  Lord,  and  they  were  his  slaves,  but  the  Lord 
they  also  identified  with  Jesus  Christ,  more  or  less 
ignoring  the  linguistic  facts,  and  regarding  "  Jesus 
Christ' '  as  a  compound  proper  name.  For  such 
Christians  the  centre  of  their  community  life  was 
in  the  present,  not  as  in  the  case  of  the  original 
Palestinian  Christians  in  the  future;  Jesus  was 
not  merely  the  future  king  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  which  was  yet  to  come,  he  was  the  spiritual 
being  who  was  the  centre  of  an  already  existing 
community,  in  which  he  was  ruling  as  Lord, 
and  he  was  looked  up  to  as  the  source  of  salvation 
both  in  this  world  and  in  the  world  to  come.  The 
original  eschatological  view  survived,  but  was 
sinking  into  the  background;  the  community  of 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         113 

the  Lord,  the  Church,  is  not  yet  formally  identified 
with  the  Kingdom  of  God,  but  it  is  not  clearly 
distinguished  from  it.  How  far  St.  Paul  himself 
moved  along  this  line  of  development  is  a  doubtful 
question,  because  we  cannot  be  sure  that  the 
present  form  of  the  later  epistles  is  really  from  his 
hand.  If  it  be,  he  had  gone  a  long  way;  if  not, 
some  of  his  followers  had  done  so.  The  matter  is 
important  for  the  history  of  St.  Paul,  but  less  so 
for  the  history  of  Christianity.  What  is  clear  is 
that  before  long  the  Christology  of  the  Gentile 
Christians  definitely  included  the  recognition  of 
Jesus  as  the  supernatural  spiritual  head  of  the 
community.  On  the  part  of  the  Antiochene 
mission  and  its  converts  the  way  was  made  ready 
for  this  development  by  the  use  of  language  which 
could  lead  up  to  this  result  (especially  the  use  of 
the  word  "lord"),1  and  by  the  existence  among 
the  God-fearers  of  a  theological  atmosphere,  de- 
rived from  the  Oriental  mystery  religions,  which 

1  The  use  of  the  phrase  Maran  atha  (i  Cor.)  seems  to  show 
that  it  was  used  in  Aramaic-speaking  circles  before  it  was  trans- 
lated into  Greek.  Bousset  seems  to  me  somewhat  to  under- 
estimate the  importance  of  this  fact;  but  his  Kyrios  Christos  and 
his  article  in  the  ZNW  for  May,  1914,  make  it  probable  that 
Kyrios  is  not  the  use  of  Jerusalem.  Probably  it  comes  from 
Semitic-speaking — not  necessarily  Jewish — or  bilingual  circles 
in  Antioch,  but  there  is  also  perhaps  more  to  be  said  as  to  the 
influence  of  the  LXX  and  its  use  of  ictpios — usually  not  6  iriptos — 
as  the  translation  of  Adonai=Jahveh. 
8 


H4        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

tended  to  make  them  look  for  a  Redeemer-Lord 
such  as  was  the  centre  of  almost  every  mystery 
religion. 

But  obviously  the  development  of  thought 
could  not  stay  here.  Further  attempts  were  in- 
evitable to  explain  the  position  of  the  Lord,  as 
the  centre  of  the  religious  life  of  the  community, 
in  more  philosphic  forms  of  theology.  The  Epistles 
to  the  Colossians  and  to  the  Hebrews  show  clearly 
the  tendency  to  make  use  of  current  philosophical 
language,  and  this  culminates  in  the  prologue  to 
the  fourth  gospel  in  the  use  of  the  word  Logos, 
which  had  already  been  rendered  familiar  by 
philosophers  as  the  designation  of  God — absolute 
reality — revealed  in  Utterance  and  in  Reason. 
To  such  philosophers  the  Divine  Logos — the  Word 
or  Reason  of  God — appeared  as  the  agent  of 
creation  and  the  sustaining  power  in  the  universe, 
whom  men  approached  in  religion  not  entirely 
as  strangers  but  because  in  some  paradoxical 
manner  the  Logos  was  already  in  them,  so  that 
in  proportion  as  they  came  to  him  they  came  also 
to  their  own  true  selves. 

But  the  Logos  was  not  only  identified  with  the 
agent  of  creation  and  the  object  and  source  of 
religious  life;  an  attempt  was  also  made  to  iden- 
tify him  with  the  gods  of  ancient  cults,  and  explain 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         115 

the  stories  of  mythology  as  illustrations  of  his 
operations  in  the  world.  The  Logos  was  espe- 
cially identified  with  Hermes,  as  is  shown  not 
only  by  the  Hermetic  literature  but  also  in  the 
Theologia  Hellenica  of  Cornutus1;  but  there  was 
a  strong  tendency  to  find  him  in  all  the  stories  of 
gods  who  had  worked  in  the  world.  It  was  in- 
evitable that  Christians  should  follow  the  same 
line  of  thought,  and  the  fourth  gospel  represents 
the  complete  identification  of  the  Lord  of  the 
Church  with  the  Logos,  and  the  recognition  of 
Jesus  as  the  incarnation  of  the  Logos.  The  prim- 
itive history  of  the  Prophet  of  Galilee,  who  an- 
nounced the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  believed 
that  he  would  reign  as  the  Messiah  when  the 
kingdom  came,  and  called  men  to  repent  that  they 
too  might  share  in  the  kingdom,  was  rewritten 
as  the  story  of  the  manifestation  in  word  and  deed 
of  the  eternal  Logos,  by  whom  the  universe  had  been 
made  and  sustained,  who  had  been  constantly  in 
the  world  in  his  servants,  and  had  come  in  these  last 
days  to  offer  to  mankind  a  share  in  his  own  eternal 
life,  beyond  the  changes  of  this  transitory  world. 

1  In  its  present  form  the  Hermetic  literature  is  not  earlier  than 
the  second  century,  though  it  probably  represents  a  much  older 
tradition,  but  Cornutus  certainly  belongs  to  the  early  first  cen- 
tury, unless  his  identification  with  the  tutor  of  Persius  can  be 
overthrown. 


n6        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

The  development  of  thought  and  practice  with 
regard  to  Baptism  and  the  commemoration  of 
the  Last  Supper  was  probably  similar  to  that 
of  Christology.  It  was  the  acceptance  by  God- 
fearers  of  originally  Jewish  rites  with  an  eschato- 
logical  meaning  as  though  they  possessed  the 
significance  of  mysteries  or  sacraments. 

The  details,  however,  are  very  obscure.  With 
regard  to  Baptism  the  facts  which  emerge  most 
clearly  are  these.  The  baptism  of  John  was 
primarily  eschatological  in  significance;  it  was  a 
baptism  of  repentance  for  the  remission  of  sins. 
Even  here  there  is  difficulty:  a  baptism  which 
effected  the  remission  of  sins — and  the  words  can 
scarcely  mean  anything  else — is  unknown  in 
Jewish  literature  before  this  time,  except  for  a 
possible  allusion  in  the  Sibylline  oracles.  It  is, 
however,  legitimate  to  regard  the  baptism  of  John 
as  an  extension  of  the  principle  involved  in  the 
washing  away  of  ceremonial  impurity,  since  the 
Essenes  seem  to  have  been  moving  in  the  same 
direction.  What  is  clear  is  the  eschatological 
significance ;  men  were  baptized  in  order  to  escape 
the  wrath  to  come,  and  they  were  primarily  con- 
cerned with  their  relationship  to  the  future  king- 
dom. There  was  no  suggestion  that  their  nature 
would  be  changed — though  this  may  be  implied 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         117 

in  the  Greek  word  for  repentance  it  is  not  Jewish — 
but  rather  that  they  were  being  prepared  for  a 
change  of  society  by  the  removal  of,  as  it  were, 
the  excrescences  of  sin,  and  the  acceptance  of  a 
new  type  of  conduct.  It  is  ethical  and  eschato- 
logical,  but  not  in  the  Greek  sense  a  sacramental 
mystery.  So  much  is  tolerably  clear.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  other  end  of  the  development, 
which  was  certainly  reached  by  the  fourth  gospel 
and  probably  by  St.  Paul's  Gentile  converts.  In 
the  Epistles  baptism  is  baptism  in  the  name  of 
Christ;  it  effects  a  union  with  his  death  and  risen 
life;  it  is  the  putting  on  of  Christ.1  We  are  al- 
ready little  removed  from  the  conception  of 
"regeneration"  which  is  characteristic  of  the 
mystery  religion,  is  clearly  expounded  in  the  con- 
versation of  Nicodemus  with  Jesus  in  the  fourth 
gospel,  and  is  an  essential  part  of  the  intellectual 
apparatus  of  Catholic  Christianity. 

The  difference  between  these  two  extremes  is 
great,  but  just  as  the  word  "Lord"  was  a  point 
of  union  between  the  Jewish  missionaries  of  the 
Antiochene  school  and  their  converts  from  "  God- 
fearing" circles,  though  they  did  not  really  attach 

1  Cf.  Rom.  vi.  and  Gal.  iii.  See  also  Heitmuller's  Im  Namen 
Jesu  and  the  article  on  "Early  Christian  Baptism,"  in  Hastings's 
Dictionary  of  Religion  and  Ethics. 


n8         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  same  connotations  to  the  word,  so  the  rite  of 
baptism  was  also  a  point  of  contact,  though  it 
was  interpreted  differently.  ■ 

If  we  try  to  trace  the  line  of  the  development 
from  the  baptism  of  John  to  sacramental  baptism 
in  the  name  of  Christ,  it  proves  impossible  to 
attain  clearly  defined  results.  The  unbroken 
silence  of  the  synoptic  narrative  goes  to  show  that 
Jesus  recognized  no  baptism  except  that  of  John, 
for  the  famous  passage  in  Matt,  xxviii.,  19,  with 
the  Trinitarian  formula  cannot  be  regarded  as 
historical  or  even  very  early.2  This  conclusion 
is  supported  by  the  existence  of  Christians  in 
Ephesus  who  had  only  been  baptized  with  the 
baptism  of  John.3  As  suggested  above  (p.  97  f.), 
these  Christians,  like  Apollos,  probably  represent 
the  survival  of  those  who  had  been  followers  of 

1  St.  Paul,  however,  seems  to  have  been  far  more  "Greek" 
in  connection  with  baptism  than  he  was  with  Christology. 

2  It  may  even  be  a  textual  interpolation.  Eusebius  and  possi- 
bly some  earlier  writers  seem  to  have  had  a  text  which  read:  "Go 
and  make  disciples  in  my  name,  teaching  them  to  observe  all 
things,  etc.,"  omitting  all  mention  of  baptism.  But  in  any  case 
the  evidence  of  Acts  and  Epistles  shows  that  the  Trinitarian  form- 
ula is  not  the  earliest  form  of  Christian  baptism,  and  it  is  incredible 
that  this  should  be  so  if  Jesus  had  directly  enjoined  it. 

3  Acts  xix.,  1-7.  The  whole  story  gives  the  impression  that 
the  relationship  of  Jesus  to  John  the  Baptist,  and  their  respective 
disciples,  was  closer  than  is  stated.  Those  acquainted  with  the 
history  of  Persia,  and  with  the  writings  of  Prof.  Browne,  will  be 
reminded  of  the  relationship  between  the  Bab  and  Beha. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         119 

Jesus  in  Galilee,  but  had  not  gone  up  to  Jerusalem, 
or  heard  the  Messianic  secret. 

At  what  point  did  the  Christians  begin  to 
baptize  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ?  According 
to  Acts,  immediately  after  the  Ascension.  But 
this  is  just  one  of  the  places  where  we  have  reason 
to  ask  whether  the  writer  has  not  projected  some 
of  the  customs  of  his  own  Hellenistic  Christianity 
into  the  picture  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem.  In 
the  absence  of  evidence  we  cannot  decide.  It  is 
remarkable  that  in  the  speech  of  St.  Peter  in 
Acts  iii.,  which  Harnack  regards  as  a  doublet 
of  the  speech  in  Acts  ii.,  baptism  is  not  mentioned, 
but  repentance  alone  is  required,  as  in  the  original 
message  of  Jesus  in  Mark  L,  "The  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  at  hand.  Repent!"  Especially  is  this 
important  when  it  is  observed  that  of  all  the  early 
chapters  in  Acts  the  third  is  that  which  most 
certainly  goes  back  to  a  separate  (Greek?)  source, 
because  it  has  peculiarities  of  diction  which  are 
not  found  elsewhere  in  the  book. 

Similarly  with  regard  to  the  Last  Supper  the 
two  ends  of  the  development  are  much  plainer 
than  its  course.  The  account  of  "the  institution 
of  the  Eucharist"  in  Mark  may  perhaps  be  re- 
garded as  an  "institution,"  though  it  seems  more 
probably  to  have  been  a  sign  of  the  shortness  of 


120        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  time  which  was  to  elapse  before  the  coming  of 
the  kingdom,  but  it  was  scarcely  a  " Eucharist" 
in  the  later  sense.  The  point  of  the  words  seems 
to  be  that  the  breaking  of  the  bread  and  the  out- 
pouring of  the  wine  at  the  supper  were  symbols 
of  the  approaching  suffering1  of  Jesus  whom  God 
would  now  so  soon  glorify  in  the  kingdom  which 
was  at  hand.  The  background  of  thought  is 
eschatological  and  the  sacramental  conceptions 
of  Catholic  Christianity  are  absent. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  fourth  gospel  is  abso- 
lutely Catholic  in  the  explanation  of  the  Eucharist 
given  in  John  vi.,  and  even  if  I  Cor.  x.  does  not 
prove  that  St.  Paul  regarded  the  Eucharist  as  a 
sacrificial  meal,  it  at  least  shows  that  his  Greek 
converts  took  this  view.  It  is  very  significant 
that  he  regards  this  side  of  the  matter  as  common 
ground  between  himself  and  the  Corinthians,  but 
thinks  that  it  is  necessary  to  remind  them  of 
its  eschatological  significance,  "Ye  do  show  the 
Lord's  death,  till  he  come." 

To  trace  the  details  of  the  development  is  im- 
possible, and  we  may  be  sure  that  the  writers  of 
the  Gospels  and  of  the  Acts  do  not  exaggerate 


1  Possibly  of  his  death,  but  see  p.  46  f .  In  any  case  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  rite  was  definitely  connected  with  his  death.  Cf. 
1  Cor.  xi. 


Early  Gentile  Christianity         121 

the  difference  between  the  first  and  the  last  stage. 
But  it  is  clear  that,  granted  the  custom  of  a  meal 
in  connection  with  the  religious  life  of  the  com- 
munity, bound  up  in  the  mind  of  those  who  took 
part  in  it  with  the  death  of  Jesus,  with  the  coming 
of  the  kingdom  and  his  manifestation  as  Messiah, 
and  with  the  foreshadowing  of  the  Messianic 
feast,  together  with  the  tradition  that  the  Lord 
had  instituted  this  custom,  converts  from  the 
ranks  of  Greek  God-fearers,  who  had  accepted  the 
"Lord"  as  a  Redeeming  God,  would  inevitably 
interpret  this  meal  in  the  manner  in  which  they 
were  accustomed  to  regard  the  religious  meals 
associated  with  the  mysteries  of  other  Redeeming 
Gods. 

It  is  obvious  that  we  have  in  this  development 
of  Christological  and  sacramental  thought  the 
recognizable  beginnings  of  Catholic  Christianity. 
Moreover,  the  Church,  without  ceasing  to  preach 
and  partially  to  practise  the  world-renouncing 
ethics  of  Jesus,  began  more  and  more  consciously 
to  seek  a  synthesis  with  the  world-accepting 
ethics  of  the  Empire.  It  became  a  society  of 
those  who  not  only  hope  for  a  new  age  but  also 
accept  the  present  age  and  the  responsibility  of 
taking  part  in  its  development.     The  Greek  point 


122         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

of  view,  with  its  worship  of  the  Lord  and  its  sac- 
raments, became  dominant,  though  the  Jewish 
element  never  wholly  died  out;  it  was  now  neces- 
sary for  the  Church  seriously  to  measure  its 
strength  against  its  rivals  and  opponents.  Some  of 
the  consequences  of  this  process  and  its  permanent 
value  must  be  discussed  in  the  three  next  chapters. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CHURCH  AND  HEATHENISM 

Introduction— Plutarch  and  Justin— Intellectual  Dishonesty- 
Ethical  Attitude  of  Heathenism— The  Catholic  Attitude- 
Social  Waste-products— The  Sacramental  Ministry— The 
Catholic  Position— The  Protestant  Position— The  Sacra- 
mental View  of  Life — The  Need  of  the  Present. 

THE  general  outlines  of  the  Catholic  Christ- 
ianity, which  resulted  from  the  process  de- 
scribed in  the  last  chapter,  are  well  known, 
whether  it  be  regarded  as  an  institution  or  as  a 
system  of  theology.  As  an  institution  it  was  a 
sacramental  ministry;  as  a  theology  it  was  the 
application  of  philosophy  to  the  development  of 
the  propositions  that  the  Lord  is  Jesus  and  the 
Lord  is  the  Logos. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  enter  upon  the  details 
concerned  with  the  relation  of  Catholic  Christian- 
ity to  contemporary  thought;  but  rather  to  point 
out  how  far  it  was  modified  by  controversy  with 
rival  systems,  to  emphasize  the  permanent  ele- 
ments of  truth  which  it  so  triumphantly  expressed, 

123 


124        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

though  in  its  own  way  and  under  the  conditions 
of  these  controversies,  and  to  show  how  it  left  a 
legacy  of  thought  and  practice  which  every  system 
of  theology  must  remember  if  it  seeks  to  do  for  its 
own  generation  what  Catholic  Christianity  did  for 
at  least  a  thousand  years  to  supply  an  intellectually 
adequate  system  of  thought  and  create  a  spiritu- 
ally satisfying  corporate  organization  for  the  ex- 
pression of  the  common  experience  of  religion. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  main  purpose 
of  Christian  theologians  during  this  period  was 
to  obtain  intellectual  correctness,  a  thing  which 
is  never  completely  to  be  obtained,  and  is  only 
approached  by  the  method  of  controversy.  In 
intellectual  life  we  are  always  engaged  in  dispute, 
because  in  the  attempt  to  enlarge  the  boundaries 
of  knowledge  and  logical  thought  our  efforts  are 
always  a  mixture  of  failure  and  success.  The 
appeal  for  judgment  is  to  our  peers,  and  each  man 
who  has  any  claim  to  be  an  original  worker  is  in 
turn  judge  and  judged.  Or  to  change  the  meta- 
phor, progress  is  obtained,  as  it  were,  by  a  process 
of  friction.  One  man's  thoughts  are  rubbed  up 
against  his  rivals'  until  the  excrescences  are  re- 
moved, and  we  obtain  something  which  is  not  the 
same  as  the  original  propositions,  but  is  better  than 
either.     The  necessary  condition  for  intellectual 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      125 

improvement  in  any  society  is  the  permission  to 
discuss  and  the  recognition  of  the  principle  that 
the  less  cannot  judge  the  greater.  The  intellectual 
sterility  of  a  great  part  of  modern  Christianity  is 
largely  because  free  discussion  has  been  rendered 
impossible  by  the  system  of  settling  theological 
disputes  by  discipline  instead  of  argument,  by  an 
appeal  to  past  opinion  instead  of  to  logic  or  evi- 
dence, and  by  the  authority  of  ecclesiastical  officers 
whose  devotion  to  their  own  duties  has  rendered 
it  impossible  for  them  to  be  in  the  forefront  of 
scholarship,  so  that  they  are  often  disposed  to 
ignore  or  misunderstand  problems  which  students 
have  raised. 

But  it  was  eminently  possible  in  the  days  of  the 
early  Church,  and  the  three  opponents  attacked 
by  the  theological  leaders  of  the  day  were  Heathen- 
ism, Gnosticism,  and  what,  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  may  be  called  Uninstructed  Christianity. 
In  none  of  these  three  disputes  can  we  fairly  say 
that  the  whole  truth  was  on  the  side  of  the  Chris- 
tian theologian.  But  he  was  right  on  the  case 
as  it  was  then  presented  by  his  immediate  oppo- 
nent ;  and  if  we  study  history  with  a  view  to  under- 
standing its  meaning  rather  than  cataloguing 
its  facts,  the  important  thing  is  to  see  why  this 
was  so  in  each  case.     It  will,  moreover,  be  found 


126        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

to  be  roughly  true  that  the  development  of  the 
sacramental  ministry  is  more  closely  connected 
with  the  struggle  against  Heathenism,  the  form 
of  the  belief  in  God  and  the  hope  of  a  future  life 
with  the  struggle  against  Gnosticism,  and  the 
development  of  Christology  with  the  struggle 
against  Uninstructed  Christianity. 

In  the  controversy  with  Heathenism  there  is 
nothing  which  so  shocks  the  student  as  the  dis- 
covery that  again  and  again  he  is  bound  to  admit 
that  the  arguments  of  the  Christian  Apologists, 
who  were  attacking  Heathenism,  often  seem  to  be 
wanting  equally  in  justice  and  in  logic.  If  we 
compare  the  apology  of  Justin  Martyr  with,  for 
instance,  Plutarch's  book  on  Isis  and  Osiris,  we 
are  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  Heathenism  which 
Justin  attacks  is  a  thing  of  straw  which  he  sets 
up  in  order  to  knock  down,  and  that  in  some  ways 
Plutarch  stands  a  great  deal  nearer  to  Justin  than 
he  does  to  the  caricature  of  Heathenism  which 
Justin  attacks.  Justin  repeats  again  and  again 
all  the  arguments  used  by  the  Stoic  philosophers 
against  the  myths  of  Greek  and  Oriental  theology; 
Plutarch  would  probably  have  replied  that  he 
fully  agreed  with  the  greater  part  of  the  Stoic 
arguments,  but  that  the  whole  complex  of  nar- 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      127 

ratives  were  one  long  allegory  showing  the  working 
of  God  and  of  the  divine  Logos  in  the  world.  If 
you  leave  out  the  heathen  mythology  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Old  Testament  history  and  the  pre- 
sentation of  the  life  of  Jesus  on  the  other,  there 
is  very  little  difference  between  Plutarch  and 
Justin.  Both  regard  the  whole  history  of  the 
world  as  due  to  the  working  of  the  divine  Logos, 
both  regard  the  chief  end  of  man  as  his  union  with 
the  Logos,  and  both  regard  religion  as  the  means 
whereby  this  union  may  be  accomplished. 

Plutarch  was  a  cultivated,  able  man,  spiritual 
and  reverent:  he  had  all  the  prestige  of  historic 
continuity,  social  recognition,  and  ancestral  tradi- 
tion on  his  side.  The  Christian  Apologists  were 
fighting  against  all  these  advantages  and  their 
main  weapon  of  offence,  the  prophetic  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Old  Testament,  would  not  today  find 
any  defender  among  the  leaders  of  the  study  of 
this  subject.  Justin  argues  that  every  event  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  is  the  fulfilment  of  some  verse  in 
the  Old  Testament,  and  his  powers  of  distorted 
exegesis  are  almost  incredible.  Moreover,  he 
maintains  that  the  demons,  who  masqueraded 
as  gods  in  Heathenism,  knew  these  prophecies, 
and  produced  false  fulfilments  in  order  to  deceive 
people.     Thus  not  only  the  birth  of  Jesus,  but 


128         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

also  that  of  Perseus,  was  a  fulfilment  of  prophecy 
— the  one  the  true  fulfilment,  the  other  the  frau- 
dulent fulfilment  by  demons.  The  only  thing 
which  the  demons  had  not  realized  was  the  mean- 
ing of  the  prophecies  of  the  crucifixion,  and  that 
was  the  cause  of  their  undoing. * 

Why  did  this  kind  of  argument  succeed  as 
against  Plutarch?  One  answer  would  be  that  it 
did  not  really  succeed.  So  long  as  the  educated 
serious  heathen  of  Plutarch's  type  remained,  so 
long  did  the  Christian  Apologists  make  little 
headway.  The  universal  spread  of  Christianity 
came  when  the  decay  of  the  Empire  brought  about 
the  disappearance  of  the  intellectual  heathen,  or  as 
a  preliminary  to  their  disappearance  their  entire 
retirement  into  private  life.  According  to  this 
view  Christianity  conquered  the  Empire  because 
the  educated  classes  despaired  of  dealing  with  the 
proletariat  and  gave  up  the  struggle. 

There  is  an  element  of  truth  in  this  answer,  as 
can  be  seen  by  reading  Dr.  Dill's  Roman  Society 
in  the  Fourth  Century.  It  is  probably  true  that 
the  Apologists  made  very  little  impression  on  the 

1  This  view,  that  the  redemptive  work  of  the  Cross  was  brought 
about  by  deceiving  the  demons,  who  allowed  Jesus  to  enter  their 
realms  in  ignorance  of  his  triumph,  is  often  found  in  early  Chris- 
tian literature:  cf.,  for  instance,  the  Descensus  ad  Inferos  in  the 
Acta  Pilati. 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      129 

better  educated  classes,  and  these  rather  died  out 
than  were  converted;  but  it  is  a  mistaken  view 
if  it  be  intended  to  show  that  the  Christians  were 
wrong  and  the  heathen  right.  The  whole  truth 
was  not  on  either  side,  but  the  balance  of  "right- 
mindedness,"  rather  than  of  correctness  of  thought, 
was  on  the  Christian  side. 

The  defect  of  Heathenism  was  twofold :  it  was 
intellectually  not  quite  honest,  for  it  subordinated 
exact  truth  to  the  interests  of  an  institution,  and 
it  had  a  perverted  view  of  the  world-accepting 
ethics  which  it  ought  to  have  taken  over  from  the 
best  thought  of  the  early  Empire. 

Plutarch  and  those  like  him  were  the  victims 
of  a  kind  of  intellectual  self-deception  which  would 
amount  to  dishonesty  if  it  were  not  unconscious. 
They  did  not  really  believe  the  mythology 
which  formed  the  basis  of  popular  Heathenism 
— they  were  too  well  educated,  and  too  intel- 
ligent. But  they  feared  the  breach  in  the  conti- 
nuity of  tradition  which  would  be  suffered  if  they 
admitted  its  falsity.  Therefore  they  said,  "It  is 
true — symbolically."  A  meaning  was  found  for 
everything,  even  the  most  obscene  details  and  the 
most  foolish  trifles.  Thus  they  could  not  really 
escape  the  attacks  either  of  merely  destructive 
philosophers,  or  of  the  Christians.     The  mytho- 


130        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

logy  dragged  them  down  with  it,  because  they 
could  not  see  that  it  had  become  the  distortion 
instead  of  the  expression  of  religion.  It  is  true 
that  many  of  the  Old  Testament  stories  are  as 
mythological  as  those  which  Plutarch  related: 
but  the  difference  was  that  the  Christians  abso- 
lutely believed  them.  Sincere  belief  in  a  mistaken 
creed  does  not  always  detract  from  a  preacher's 
message;  but  the  public  ear  is  never  kept  by  any 
one  who  has  constantly  to  stop  in  order  to  explain 
that  what  he  is  saying  is  only  symbolically  true, 
when  the  language  in  which  it  is  expressed  was 
clearly  intended  literally  by  those  who  first  made 
use  of  it.  The  public  cannot  always  express  its 
meaning  clearly,  but  what  it  feels  is  that  the  sym- 
bolism is  not  part  of  the  original  message:  that  it 
is  not  extracted  from  the  story,  but  put  into  it, 
and  that  the  same  ingenuity  could  equally  well 
find  any  lesson  anywhere.  When  a  "sacred 
history" — which  is  what  Plutarch's  mythology 
was — has  come  to  mean  everything  which  the 
preacher  wishes,  it  has  also  come  to  mean  nothing, 
and  his  audience  leaves  him  in  the  end  for  those 
who  say  so. 

Plutarch  for  all  his  truly  spiritual  and  beautiful 
nature  was  looking  to  the  past  for  the  centre  of 
his  religion.     The  Christians,  in  spite  of  the  un- 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      131 

couthness  of  much  of  their  thought,  found  their 
real  inspiration  in  the  present,  and  were  living 
for  the  future.  And  yet,  even  when  we  see  clearly 
that  these  educated  heathen  were  wrong  in  their 
attitude,  both  to  the  necessities  of  their  less  for- 
tunate neighbours,  and  to  the  intellectual  neces- 
sity for  abandoning  a  mythology  which  they  did 
not  believe  to  be  true,  and  did  not  regard  as  really 
essential  to  their  religion — even  then  we  leave 
Plutarch  with  a  sigh.  He  saw  the  value  of  historic 
continuity,  he  wished  to  keep  the  inherited  organi- 
zation, and  recognized  its  enormous  power.  He 
tried  to  do  what  Erasmus  tried  to  accomplish  in 
the  days  of  the  Reformation.  Both  of  them 
failed,  and  their  failure  meant  a  real  loss,  because 
the  cause  of  progress  proved  in  the  end  to  have 
passed  to  the  keeping  of  those  who  were  in  many 
ways  greatly  inferior  in  breadth  of  outlook  and 
in  general  cultivation. 

Probably  even  more  important  than  this  defect 
in  Heathenism  was  its  ethical  attitude.  The  Em- 
pire had  developed  a  system  of  world-accepting 
ethics,  but  in  practice  this  had  been  degraded 
by  treating  the  preservation  of  institutions  as  a 
substitute  for  the  service  of  society,  and  by  a 
constant  confusion  between  the  maintenance  of 
privilege  and  the  discharge  of  responsibility.     It 


132        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

is  true  that  world-accepting  ethics  came  from  the 
Empire  rather  than  the  Church;  but  it  was  the 
Church  which  proved  best  to  understand  them 
so  that  in  the  end  they  came  to  be  known  as 
Christian  ethics.  Moreover  at  its  best  the  Church 
never  overlooked  the  world-renouncing  ethics  of 
Jesus:  the  expectation  of  the  immediate  coming 
of  the  kingdom  died  away,  but  the  truths  which 
it  had  rendered  visible  were  never  wholly  for- 
gotten. Catholic  teaching — always  and  neces- 
sarily in  advance  of  Catholic  practice — combined 
complementary  truths  without  confusing  them, 
and  produced  generations  of  men  and  women  who 
proved  their  citizenship  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
by  the  faithful  service  of  the  society  of  mankind. 
In  this  connection  the  real  weakness  of  Heath- 
enism and  the  real  strength  of  Christianity  are 
indicated  by  the  famous  sneer  of  Celsus1  that 
Christians  appealed  to  the  outcasts  whom  intel- 
ligent sects  excluded.  For  in  reality  the  Christ- 
ian method  was  politically — using  the  word  in 
its  proper  sense — correct.  The  proletariat  in  the 
Roman  Empire  like  its  modern  analogue,  was  a 
waste  product  of  the  social  machine.    The  men 

1  Origen,  Contra  Celsum,  3,  59.  There  is  an  admirable  summary 
of  Celsus'  arguments  in  T.  R.  Glover's  Conflict  of  Religions  in 
the  Early  Roman  Empire. 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      133 

of  the  type  of  Celsus  and  the  cults  to  which  he 
alludes  were  engaged  in  raising  a  barrier  of  "re- 
spectability" between  themselves  and  the  less 
desirable  classes,  by  increasing  and  extending  to 
religious  life  the  wall  of  privileges  separating  them. 
The  uselessness  of  the  waste  products  was  ac- 
centuated. The  Christians  on  the  other  hand 
accepted  the  social  outcast  and  endeavoured  to 
raise  his  general  moral  and  religious  standard. 
They  lessened  the  uselessness  of  the  waste  pro- 
ducts, and  even  succeeded  in  finding  for  them  an 
effective  employment. 

The  failure  of  Heathenism,  then,  was  because 
it  falsely  interpreted  the  practical  working  out  of 
the  world-accepting  ethic  which  was  peculiarly 
its  own  message,  while  the  Church  really  carried 
it  into  effect.  It  did  so  no  doubt  unconsciously, 
and  here  again  the  abiding  influence  of  the  escha- 
tological  expectation  and  of  world-renunciation 
can  be  traced.  The  Church  called  on  the  sinner 
and  social  outcast  to  turn  and  amend  his  life,  to 
live  soberly  and  honestly;  it  taught  him  right 
conduct  and  pure  thought.  It  did  so  in  order  to 
prepare  him  for  a  New  Age,  which  the  angels 
of  the  Lord  would  suddenly  bring;  but  in  fact 
it  produced  a  "new  race"  which  possessed  the 
necessary  virtues  of  good  citizens,  but  were  un- 


134         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

attached  to  the  clogged  machinery  of  the  Empire. 
Therefore,  when  the  crash  came  and  barbarian 
armies  rather  than  angelic  hosts  heralded  a  New 
Age,  it  was  the  Christians,  not  the  more  cultivated 
heathen,  who  were  able  to  survive. 

It  is  worth  noting  how  closely  these  facts  bear 
on  modern  life,  and  how  seriously  they  ought  to 
affect  the  thoughts  of  the  leaders  of  Christian 
churches.  In  the  Roman  Empire  the  accumu- 
lation of  waste  products  became  so  great  that 
the  machinery  became  clogged,  and  civilization — 
which  is  rapid  movement,  not  a  stationary  condi- 
tion— broke  down.1  We  now  know  the  commer- 
cial value  of  finding  uses  for  waste  products,  and 
are  well  aware  that  a  business  in  which  the  pro- 
portion of  waste  products  is  constantly  increasing 
is  doomed  to  bankruptcy.  Yet  if  we  look  at  the 
world  as  a  whole,  we  find  that  there  is  practically 
only  one  business  in  which  the  percentage  of 
waste  product  is  increasing  instead  of  diminish- 
ing, and  that  is  the  factory  of  human  lives.  The 
real  tragedy  of  modern  life  is  that  whereas  social 
improvements  are  increasing  the  average  length 
of  actual  existence,  economic  methods  are  shorten- 
ing  the  period  of  efficient  existence.     That  is  to 

1  The  barbarians  did  not  come  because  they  were  strong,  but 
because  the  Empire  had  become  weak. 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      135 

say,  a  man  who  does  not  happen  to  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  belonging  to  the  class  of  brain  workers 
has  now  the  right  to  expect  that  he  will  live  longer 
than  his  grandfather  did,  but  he  has  also  the  un- 
pleasant certainty  that  he  will  not  be  able  to  go 
on  working  productively  so  long  as  his  grandfather 
did.  In  other  words,  there  is  in  his  existence  a 
longer  period  of  life  which,  socially  speaking,  is 
a  waste  product. 

Ultimately,  if  the  process  be  continued,  this 
must  bring  the  sociaj.  machinery  to  the  scrap- 
heap,  and  only  those  parts  of  our  "  triumphant 
civilization"  will  survive  which  have  shown  some 
capacity  for  dealing  with  waste  products.  Would 
this  again  be  the  Christian  Church? 

The  sacramental  ministry  of  the  Catholic 
Church  is  the  positive  side  of  this  mission  of 
Christianity  to  the  "waste  products"  and  failures 
of  life.  Those  who  are  whole  need  no  physician, 
but,  not  only  among  the  " waste  products"  in 
the  economic  sense,  there  are  always  many  who 
are  spiritually  failures,  and  need  help.  To  define 
the  relationship,  in  terms  of  cause  and  effect, 
between  the  nervous  system  and  the  psychical 
condition  of  those  whom  William  James  calls  "  sick 
souls"  is  difficult;  but  the  two  things  are  inti- 
mately connected.     There  is  always  a  large  class  of 


136         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

people  who  are  suffering  from  the  consciousness  of 
spiritual  evil  in  themselves,  with  which  they  are 
fighting  a  losing  battle,  and  this  consciousness 
breaks  down  their  nervous  strength;  just  as  on 
the  other  hand  there  are  those  whose  nervous 
system  is  weakened  by  strain  or  overwork,  and 
betrays  them  into  moral  and  spiritual  failure. 
Such  men  need  physicians  and  treatment.  That 
is  exactly  what  the  sacramental  ministry  sought 
to  provide. 

Why  are  men  miserable?  asked  the  Church, 
and  answered  the  question  by  saying  that  it  was 
because  of  sin.  It  did  not  analyse  closely  the 
concept  of  sin,  but  it  offered  release  from  it  by 
baptism.  The  original  position  was  that  baptism 
alone  was  the  cure  for  sin ;  it  was  in  itself  sufficient 
for  the  needs  of  the  believer.  Experience,  how- 
ever, showed  the  difficulty  of  this  position;  it 
became  more  and  more  clear  that  Christians  were 
not  immune  from  the  attacks  of  sin,  and  if  sin- 
lessness  were  really  required  from  them  as  a  con- 
dition of  salvation  few  indeed  would  be  saved. 
Sin  after  baptism  thus  became  a  practical  prob- 
lem; a  second  baptism,  suggested  by  some,  was 
regarded  as  impossible,  but  nevertheless  analo- 
gous rites — in  so  far  as  they  were  looked  upon 
as  sacraments — were  established.     Penitence   (or 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      137 

Penance,  to  use  the  more  customary  word)  and 
the  Mass  came  to  be  used  as  the  sacramental 
means  whereby  Christians  could  be  cleansed  from 
the  stains  of  post-baptismal  sin,  and  the  ministry 
of  the  Church  developed  into  a  great  system  for 
their  administration,  in  order  to  heal  and  comfort 
souls  stricken  with  sin  and  calling  for  the  care  of 
a  physician.1 

It  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  fact  that  there  is 
in  modern  Christianity  the  widest  variation  of 
opinion  as  to  the  value  of  this  development.  The 
Catholic  regards  the  sacramental  ministry  as 
the  thing  which  he  prizes  above  everything;  the 
Protestant  as  a  miserable  perversion  of  the  truth 
and  the  recrudescence  of  heathen  practices.  There 
is,  I  believe,  nothing  more  important  than  the 
correct  understanding  of  the  way  in  which  both 
of  the  positions  are  based  upon  an  imperfect 
appreciation,  rather  than  on  a  complete  misun- 
derstanding of  the  facts. 

The  Catholic  position  is  that  believers2  obtain 
grace  through  the  outward  forms  of  the  Christian 

1  The  details  of  this  development  are  obscure,  but  some  of  its 
more  important  features  are  discussed  in  an  appendix  on  pp.  213  ff. 

2  It  is  worth  noticing  that  the  modern  psychiaters  would  say- 
that  the  sacraments  "work"  by  suggestion;  the  theologians  say 
by  "faith."  In  the  end  they  are  not  so  far  apart,  and  ultimately 
they  will  probably  learn  to  understand  and  value  each  other's 
contributions. 


138         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

sacraments.  The  evidence  of  thousands  of  pious 
Catholics  is  that  this  is  really  their  experience. 
They  feel  that  the  sacraments  of  the  Confessional 
and  the  Mass  are  for  them  really  sources  of  spirit- 
ual life  which  help  them  in  their  difficulties,  and 
are  for  them  the  centre  of  their  religious  life.  We 
have  not  got  the  least  right  to  say  that  the  Catho- 
lics deceive  themselves,  that  it  is  not  so,  and  that 
it  is  merely  superstition.  What  seems  to  me  to 
be  wrong  is  when  Catholics  say  that  no  one  else 
can  obtain  the  same  grace  by  any  other  means. 
There,  I  venture  to  think,  the  evidence  is  against 
them,  for  if  we  take  the  case  of  the  modern  Pro- 
testant, and  listen  to  his  evidence  with  the  same 
respect  which  we  have  paid  to  the  Catholic,  we 
have  to  admit  that  he  obtains  the  same  grace  by 
other  means.  He  goes  to  the  Church  Service  on 
Sunday  morning,  or  Sunday  evening.  Is  it  not 
true  that  he  does  again  and  again  receive  from  that 
service  (which  is  not  called  a  sacrament  but  is  so  in 
reality)  exactly  the  same  lifting  up  of  his  spiritual 
life?  It  helps  him,  and  it  sends  him  on  his  way 
a  refreshed  and  a  better  man.  Go  on  one  step 
further,  and  take  the  Quaker.  He  goes  to  his 
Meeting,  and  there  is  no  word  spoken,  yet  he 
also  goes  away  from  it  feeling  spiritually  re- 
freshed and  a  better  man,  and  I  must  add  my 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      139 

own  testimony  that  so  also  do  others  who  with- 
out being  Quakers  have  been  privileged  to  attend 
their  meetings. 

Catholic,  Protestant,  and  Quaker  in  their  re- 
spective ways  all  eat  of  the  same  spiritual  food  and 
drink  of  the  same  spiritual  drink,  and  we  are  faced 
here  by  one  of  the  really  fundamental  facts  of 
existence,  that  for  the  great  majority  of  the  human 
race,  and  probably  for  all  of  us,  spiritual  life  is 
always  conveyed  along  material  channels.  That 
seems  to  me  to  be  the  truth  which  is  contained  in 
sacramental  teaching.  "All  things  are  double, 
one  against  another,"  and  we  only  obtain  cog- 
nizance of  the  infinite  and  spiritual  through  the 
finite  and  material  world.  Therefore  all  these 
statements  of  religious  experience  are  true  as  long 
as  they  are  not  made  exclusive.  All  through  we 
have  a  series  of  what  I  prefer  to  call  sacraments. 
The  Catholic  has  the  consecrated  element  of  the 
Mass.  The  Protestant — I  am  thinking  mainly  of 
the  Protestant  of  Holland — has  his  Church  Service 
with  psalms  and  sermon,  which  is  to  him  more  than 
an  address  by  the  preacher  because  it  links  him 
up  with  the  historic  past  of  his  church  and  nation, 
and  becomes  to  him  a  sacrament,  though  he  would 
not  perhaps  choose  that  word  to  describe  it.  The 
Quaker  has  found  in  his  Meeting  a  sacrament  in 


140        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

which  silence  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign. 
Surely  the  same  thing  is  true  of  life  as  a  whole. 
There  are  two  ways  of  regarding  life.  We  can 
regard  it  as  a  finite  existence  in  which  we  are  irre- 
trievably imprisoned.  Or  we  can  regard  it  as  a 
continuing  process  of  constant  revelation  of  an 
infinite  world  behind  the  finite  one.  That  is 
sacramental :  it  leads  us  to  realize  that  everything 
in  life  has  a  double  value,  and  to  see  that  suc- 
cess, failure,  pleasure,  and  sorrow — to  take  some 
of  the  elemental  things — are  not  merely  incidents, 
favourable  or  unfavourable,  in  our  existence. 
They  are  things  through  which  we  obtain  the 
sacramental  insight  into  the  infinite  world  behind. 

Hence  in  a  season  of  calm  weather 

Though  inland  far  we  be. 
Our  souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 

Which  brought  us  hither, 

Can  in  a  moment  travel  thither, 
And  see  the  children  sport  upon  the  shore 
And  hear  the  mighty  waters  rolling  evermore. 

It  was  for  that  reason  that  in  the  history  of  Israel 
the  servant  of  the  prophet  at  one  moment  saw 
only  the  hills  of  Samaria,  bleak  and  bare,  and  the 
next  moment  they  seemed  to  him  full  of  horses 
and  chariots  of  fire. 

Thus  with  regard  to  sacraments  as  means  of 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      141 

spiritual  grace   the   Catholic  was   right,   and  is 
right,  in  claiming  their  efficiency  as  medicine  for 
the  sick  soul,  or  as  food  for  the  soul  that  is  not 
sick,  and  the  Protestant  has  been  right  in  resisting 
the  Catholic  claim  to,  as  it  were,  an  exclusive 
control.     The    question    becomes    a    little    more 
complicated  if  one  passes  on  to  the  question  of  the 
physician,  who  is  to  administer  the  medicine — 
from   the   sacramental   rite   to   the   sacramental 
ministry  itself.     Here  at  first  sight  the  Protestant 
seems  to  have  good  reason  for  his  attack:  he  can 
say  with  justice  that  the  Confessional  and  the 
Catholic   priesthood   have   been   responsible    for 
untold  misery  and  crime.     He  is,  I  believe,  per- 
fectly right:  but  he  could  say  the  same  of  the 
custom  of  taking  drugs.     Abusus  non  tollit  usum. 
If  a  man  is  sick,  whether  physically  or  spiritually, 
he  needs  personal  care :  of  course  he  will  suffer  if  he 
fall  into  the  hands  of  an  ignorant,  bad  doctor, 
but  the  true  remedy  for  that  is  to  improve  medical 
training,  not  to  abolish  physicians.     The  reaction 
at  the  Reformation  against  the  Catholic  priest- 
hood led  to  the  neglect  of  this  fact. 

It  was  felt,  and  rightly  felt,  that  the  Confessional 
had  been  abused,  and  that  the  priest  had  only  the 
same  power  to  "forgive  sins"  as  any  other  man; 
but  the  fact  was  overlooked  that  the  element  of 


142         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

value  in  the  Confessional  was  that  it  afforded  a 
refuge  for  the  sick  soul.  It  was  desirable  to  educate 
the  physician,  and  to  change  the  method  of  the 
consultation;  but  Protestantism  forgot  that,  taken 
at  its  best,  the  Confessional  stood  for  the  inter- 
course of  the  sick  man  with  the  physician.  It  was 
right,  I  believe,  to  abolish  the  Confessional;  but 
it  was  wrong  not  to  provide  some  means  for  doing 
the  work  which  it  was  intended  to  perform. 

The  result  has  been  that  for  many  generations 
in  Protestant  countries  the  pulpit,  the  preaching 
of  the  Word,  and  the  practice  of  philanthropy 
have  largely  obscured  the  "one  thing  needful" — 
the  care  of  the  spiritually  sick ;  and  the  temptation 
of  the  clergy  has  been  too  much  to  busy  themselves 
with  the  preaching  of  faith  and  the  practice  of 
good  works,  to  study  too  little  the  necessity  of 
those  whose  souls  are  crying  out  for  help,  and  to 
assume  that  all  of  them  are  suffering  from  the  same 
disease,  and  need  the  same  treatment. 

In  the  same  way,  to  an  extent  which  is  perhaps 
seldom  realized,  both  the  strength  and  weakness 
of  the  Church  of  Rome1  are  to  be  found  in  its 
possession  of  the  Confessional.     It  is  its  weakness, 

1 1  do  not  feel  that  the  same  can  be  said  of  the  English  Church: 
my  own  experience  has  been  that  the  Anglican  priest  who  encour- 
ages confession  is,  as  a  rule,  much  inferior  in  wisdom  to  the 
Roman,  though  no  doubt  there  are  exceptions. 


The  Church  and  Heathenism      143 

because  by  insisting  on  it  for  all,  whether  they  be 
spiritually  sick  or  not,  it  induces  in  the  healthy  a 
habit  of,  as  it  were,  spiritual  drug-taking;  it  is  its 
strength,  because  it  provides  a  means  whereby 
the  spiritually  sick  can  obtain  advice  and  treat- 
ment from  men  who,  even  if  they  have  only  learnt 
it  empirically,  have  often  a  singularly  good  know- 
ledge of  the  pathology  of  spiritual  life. 

In  this  respect  no  Protestant  church  can  com- 
pete with  the  Roman  Catholic,  and  the  future  of 
Christianity  in  Northern  Europe  depends  on  the 
power  and  the  willingness  of  the  Roman  Catholics 
to  change  and  develop  the  Confessional,  and  of  the 
Protestants  to  make  good  their  deficiencies,  not, 
of  course  by  a  return  to  the  Confessional  so  much 
as  by  an  attempt  to  do  in  a  modern  way  what  the 
Confessional  did  in  the  manner  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  first  step  in  this  direction  would  be  the  scien- 
tific study  of  psychology.  The  generation  in 
which  we  live  is  one  which  pays  less  and  less  atten- 
tion to  the  homiletics  and  diatribes  of  the  pulpit; 
but  it  is  also  a  generation  which  is  spiritually 
more  delicate  than  its  predecessors;  and  it  looks 
for  a  Church  which  will  help  it  back  to  spiritual 
health,  and  will  give  individual  attention  to  indi- 
vidual souls,  recognizing  the  infinite  variety  of 
religious  experiences,  both  healthy  and  diseased, 


144         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

of  which  the  human  soul  is  capable.  At  the  pre- 
sent moment  in  Protestant  circles  those  who  are 
— consciously  or  not — spiritually  sick  probably 
consult  their  doctor  far  more  often  than  they  do 
the  clergy,  and  because  the  doctor  is  usually  the 
man  who,  in  the  present  constitution  of  society 
has  the  most  knowledge  of  the  obscure  sides  of 
human  nature,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  do  so ; 
but  the  clergy  should  not  forget  that  this  fact  is 
in  itself  an  indictment  of  their  competence. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  CHURCH  AND  GNOSTICISM 

Gnosticism — The  Theory  of  the  Pleroma — Creation — The 
Christian  Opposition — The  Present  Position — Redemption 
— The  Resurrection  of  the  Flesh — St.  Paul — Catholics  and 
Protestants — Purgatory — The  Modern  Man. 

EVEN  more  important  than  the  struggle 
with  Heathenism  was  that  with  Gnosticism. 
Gnosticism1  was  an  illegitimate  child  of 
the  Mystery  religions.  It  accepted  the  prevailing 
astral  theology  and  the  Weltanschauung  which 
went  with  it,  but  it  made  concessions  to  the  general 
human  desire  to  obtain  freedom  by  avoiding  the 
determinism  of  destiny. 

Its  main  features  can  easily  be  described, 
though  it  is  impossible  to  attain  either  certainty 

1  Of  recent  literature  the  most  necessary  contributions  are: 
A.  Hilgenfeld,  Ketzergeschichte  des  Urchristentums;  W.  Bousset, 
Hauptprobleme  der  Gnosis,  and  the  articles  Gnosis  and  Gnostiker 
in  Pauly  Wissowa's  Real-Encyklopddie  and  E.  de  Faye,  Introduc- 
tion &  V etude  du  Gnosticisme.  See  also  P.  Wendland,  Die  Hel- 
lenistisch-romische  Kultur,  pp.  163-187,  especially  valuable  as  a 
short  account  with  full  and  instructive  references  to  the  literature 
of  the  subject.  For  purely  heathen  Gnosticism  Reitzenstein 
Poimandres  is  indispensable,  though  to  be  used  with  caution. 

10  145 


146        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

or  clearness  when  the  details  are  approached.  It 
was  held  that  "in  the  beginning"  there  was  one 
primeval  being,  the  All  Father,  and  the  Silence 
which  surrounded  him.  Whether  this  is,  strictly- 
speaking,  Dualism  is  perhaps  not  quite  so  certain 
as  is  sometimes  maintained:  I  am  not  sure  that 
some  Gnostics  were  not  trying  to  be  Monists, 
but  were  impeded  by  the  difficulty  of  thinking  of 
existence  without  at  once  also  thinking  of  non- 
existence as  equally  real.  However  that  may  be, 
the  Gnostics  certainly  went  on  to  conceive  of  the 
propagation  of  a  series  of  Beings  from  this  original 
pair,  All-Father  and  Silence,  until  at  last  a  complete 
system  of  Beings  was  obtained — the  Pleroma,1 
or  Fulness.  These  were  (usually,  at  all  events) 
regarded  as  a  series  of  pairs,  male  and  female, 
and  were  established  in  a  fixed  order,  each  with 
its  own  place  in  the  Pleroma.  But  when  one  of 
them,  moved  by  curiosity,  tried  to  leave  its  place 
and  to  approach  the  Father,  this  was  prevented, 
though  ultimately  the  erring  being  was  restored 
to  its  place.  In  the  meantime,  however,  desire 
to  leave  its  place  had  given  rise  to  passion,  and 
from  this  arose  a  new  Being  outside  the  Pleroma, 

1 1  do  not  mean  that  the  names  of  "All-Father,"  or  "Silence," 
or  "Pleroma"  are  to  be  found  in  all  the  systems,  but  they,  or 
something  like  them,  are  commonly  met  with,  especially  in  the 
partially  Christianized  forms  of  Gnosticism. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism      147 

who,  directly  or  indirectly,  became  the  creator  of 
the  material  world.1  Matter  thus  divorced  from 
the  Pleroma  was  inherently  evil;  but  in  it,  as  in 
the  creator,  there  was  shut  up  a  spark  of  the 
original  spiritual  life.  To  redeem  this  spark  one 
of  the  other  spiritual  beings  came  out  of  the  Ple- 
roma, and  in  a  more  or  less  complicated  manner 
effected  the  redemption  of  the  spiritual  from  the 
material,  so  that  ultimately  the  one  could  be  an- 
nihilated and  the  other  be  restored  to  the  Pleroma. 
The  main  point  of  such  speculation  is  that 
creation,  including  the  stars,  was  a  mistake,  due  to 
a  "slip"  as  it  were,  on  the  part  of  an  originally 
divine  spiritual  being,  and  that  man  is  only  under 
the  domination  of  the  astral  necessity  so  far  as  his 
material  nature  is  concerned;  his  spiritual  nature 
belongs  to  a  higher  world,  remote  from  matter. 
Therefore  the  chief  object  of  man  is  to  set  free 
his  spiritual  nature  from  its  material  imprison- 
ment, and  this  can  be  accomplished  by  means  of 
secret  "knowledge"  and  by  making  use  of  sacra- 
mental rites.  The  varieties  of  form  in  which  this 
principle  was  worked  out  were  manifold.  Some 
of  them — represented  by  the  systems  of  Basilides 
and  Valentinus — are  known  to  us  through  the  con- 

1  In  some  systems,  at  all  events,  this  Being  repeated  the  series 
of  emanations  in  the  Pleroma. 


148         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

troversial  writings  of  Christian  writers,  such  as  Iren- 
aeus  and  Hippolytus,  though  their  methods  are  pro- 
bably largely  caricatured.  Some  were  really  more 
Christian  than  Gnostic, *  while  other  forms,  such  as 
those  found  in  the  Hermetic  literature,  remained 
purely  heathen.  Furthermore,  in  this  multitude 
of  sects  we  have  a  similar  variety  of  detail  in 
the  theology,  from  the  comparative  simplicity  of 
Poimandres  or  Marcion  to  the  "witches'  dance" — 
to  adopt  Bousset's  phrase — of  the  Pistis  Sophia. 

But  whatever  the  details  were  the  main  points 
remained  always  fixed:  creation  and  redemption 
were  connected  with  one  another,  not  by  identi- 
fying the  creator  and  the  redeemer,  but  by  bring- 
ing in  the  redeemer  to  undo  the  work  of  creation, 
and  human  nature  was  split  into  two  irreconcilable 
parts — flesh  and  spirit.  This  division  of  human 
nature  did  not  always  have  the  same  effect. 
Sometimes  it  resulted  in  extreme  asceticism:  the 
flesh  is  evil;  subdue  it,  ill-treat  it,  conquer  it,  was 
the  gospel  of  many  sects,  especially  perhaps  the 
earlier  ones.2    But  the  opposite  opinion  was  also 

1  Marcion  indeed  ought  rather  to  be  regarded  as  a  Christian 
who  took  over  the  Gnostic  Weltanschauung,  while  Basilides  was 
more  probably — certainty  is  here  not  to  be  attained — a  Gnostic 
who  accepted  the  Christian  story. 

2 1  am  not  quite  sure  whether  this  chronological  distinction 
holds  good:  the  point  is  not  clear. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism      149 

held,  that  because  the  flesh  was  evil  and  the  spirit 
good,  the  acts  of  the  flesh  were  unimportant,  and 
could  be  disregarded.  Thus  the  same  presup- 
position led  to  the  opposed  results  of  extreme 
asceticism  and  extreme  licence. 

It  was  these  sides  of  Gnosticism  which  Catholic 
Christianity  combated.  Against  the  doctrine  that 
creation  was  the  wrong  deed  of  a  misguided 
spiritual  being,  which  necessitated  the  intervention 
of  a  higher  agency  to  redeem  the  results  of  its 
mistaken  acts,  it  set  the  account  in  Genesis  of 
the  creation  of  a  world  originally  pronounced  good 
by  the  Almighty  Father  himself,  and  explained 
redemption  as  the  act  of  his  own  son  Jesus  Christ, 
who  had  come  to  men,  not  to  free  them  from  mate- 
rial existence  or  to  destroy  the  world,  but  to 
restore  alike  to  mankind  and  to  the  world  the 
perfection  of  which  the  devil  had  robbed  them.1 

Similarly,  against  the  radical  division  of  flesh 
and  spirit  it  placed  the  fact  of  the  essential  unity 
of  human  nature.  On  both  points  there  can  be 
no  doubt  but  that  Gnosticism  was  wrong.     But 

1  It  must  be  noted  that  much  of  the  danger  of  Gnosticism  was 
due  to  its  resemblance  to  the  Christian-Jewish  Weltanschauung. 
In  both  systems — Gnostic  and  Christian — there  was  the  idea  of 
a  fallen  spiritual  being:  in  Christianity,  however,  he  was  not  the 
creator  but  the  corrupter  of  the  world,  and  man  was  not  his 
creation  but  his  victim. 


150         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

each  of  them  deserves  further  discussion,  because — 
as  usually  happens — the  form  in  which  the  Church 
expressed  its  verdict  though  right  as  against  its 
immediate  opponent,  becomes  an  obstacle  to 
progress  if  it  be  regarded  as  a  final  statement  of 
absolute  truth,  and  is  wielded  as  a  weapon  in 
controversies  which  were  never  heard  of  when 
the  classical  dogmas  of  Christianity  were  drawn 
up. 

The  Christian  opposition  to  the  Gnostic  view  of 
creation  may  be  regarded  as  crystallized  in  the 
first  article  of  the  Apostles*  Creed,  "I  believe  in 
God,  the  Father,  almighty,  the  maker  of  heaven 
and  earth,"  which  represents  not  so  much  the 
desire  to  exclude  heathen  polytheism  as  Gnostic 
dualism.1  The  Gnostics  had  said  that  creation 
was  not  the  act  of  the  supreme  God,  whom  they 
approached  in  religion,  but  of  an  inferior  Demiurge, 
and  that  evil  was  part  of  its  constitution.  The 
Christians  accepted  the  Jewish  cosmogony  of  the 
first  chapters  of  Genesis  and  held  that  the  supreme 

1  At  what  date  the  phrase  "maker  of  heaven  and  earth"  was 
put  into  the  Apostles'  Creed  is  open  to  question.  But  the  evi- 
dence of  Hermas,  Mand.  i,is  conclusive  that  the  idea  expressed 
is  primitive  and  goes  back  to  the  days  of  Gnostic  controversy. 
McGiffert's  book,  The  Apostles'  Creed,  may  not  have  succeeded 
in  showing  that  the  whole  creed  is  polemic  against  Marcion, 
but  I  think  that  his  view  holds  good  if  for  "Marcion"  we  say 
"Gnostic." 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       151 

God  had  created  the  world  in  a  state  of  goodness, 
and  that  evil  having  been  introduced  by  inferior 
beings— men  and  angels— was  not  inherent  in 
its  constitution. 

In  other  words,  the  Gnostics  distinguished  the 
God  of  religion  from  the  God  of  creation  while 
the    Christians   identified   them.     Looking   back 
on  the  controversy,  it  is  now  possible  to  see  that, 
while  the  Gnostics  were  clearly  wrong,  the  Chris- 
tians  claimed  too  much  knowledge.     There  are 
two  lines  by  which  we  may  approach  the  problem 
of  the  existence  of  God:  the  philosophical,  which 
shows  that  the  universe  is  due  to  a  First  Cause, 
whom  we  call  God,  and  the  religious,  which  shows 
that  in  his  spiritual  life  man  is  conscious  of  contact 
with  a  being  greater  than  himself  and  external 
to  himself,  whom  we  also  call  God.     The  question 
is  whether  there  is  evidence  to  separate  or  to 
identify  these  two   "Gods."     The   Gnostic  was 
certainly  wrong  in  separating  them,  but  was  the 
Christian  right  in  claiming  to  identify  them  with 
clear  knowledge  of  the  exact  method  of  creation 
and  of  the  origin  of  evil?    That  seems  to  me  to  be 
more  than  doubtful. 

Two  things  are  really  important  for  denning 
the  general  position  of  the  modern  man  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  ancient  Church.     First,  we 


152        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

are  convinced  that  there  can  be  no  antithesis 
between  the  Source  of  existence  and  the  Guide  of 
existence — or,  to  use  abstract  instead  of  concrete 
terms,  between  creation  and  religion.  So  far  we 
agree  entirely  with  the  early  Christians  and  reject 
Gnostic  dualism.  Secondly,  we  need  to  recognize 
with  clearness  that  the  primitive  Church  intended 
to  go  further  than  this  and  to  accept  as  literal 
history  the  account  of  creation  in  Genesis.  The 
majority  of  us  do  not  accept  this  any  longer, 
though  some  deceive  themselves  into  thinking  that 
they  do  so  by  treating  it  as  allegory.  It  was  not 
meant  to  be  read  as  an  allegory,  and  if  you  treat 
as  an  allegory  what  was  written  as  a  statement  of 
fact  you  reject  the  intention  of  the  author,  even 
though  by  a  process  of  exegetical  violence  you 
may  succeed  in  persuading  yourself  that  you  can 
use  his  words  to  express  your  own  feelings.  It  is 
an  undeniable  fact  that  to  the  educated  world z  the 


1  What  opened  my  eyes  first  to  the  importance  of  this  was  the 
discovery,  when  I  was  a  curate  in  Lumley — a  pit  village  in  Dur- 
ham— that  the  more  intelligent  miners,  the  "deputies,"  who 
went  to  elementary  classes  in  geology  for  professional  purposes, 
realized  the  contradiction  between  the  teaching  which  they 
received,  the  proofs  of  which  they  saw  in  the  mines,  and  the  details 
of  the  story  in  Genesis.  Such  men  did  not  doubt  but  that  the 
story  in  Genesis  is  the  basis  of  Christianity,  and  therefore  regarded 
Christianity  as  disproved.  Yet  we  are  told  not  to  preach  about 
"criticism."     The  great  danger  to  Christianity  is  not  the  open 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       153 

cosmogony  in  Genesis  is  merely  a  piece  of  Semitic 
Weltanschauung  unacceptable  to  those  who  believe 
in  modern  scientific  research.  It  is  perhaps  only 
theory  against  theory,  but  the  modem  world  has 
chosen  its  theory,  and  its  view  of  God  has  changed 
accordingly.  The  view  which  is  represented  in  the 
creed  is  that  above  the  universe  there  is  an  Al- 
mighty Being,  who  called  the  world  into  existence 
by  a  series  of  sudden  acts,  and  at  times  still  inter- 
poses in  its  working  with  acts  of  the  same  nature. 
The  modern  view  says  very  little  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world;  frankly,  it  does  not  pretend  to 
know  how  the  universe  came  into  being.  But  it 
recognizes  a  great  purpose  running  through  it  so 
far  as  it  can  be  observed  both  in  space  and  time, 
and  the  modern  man  of  good  will  is  above  all 
things  anxious  to  bring  his  own  efforts,  whatever 
they  may  be,  into  harmony  with  this  purpose.  It  is 
sometimes  said  that  this  is  the  abandonment  of 
the  belief  in  a  personal  God,  but  this  is  a  miscon- 
ception. From  one  point  of  view  you  cannot 
have  a  purpose  without  a  person,  and  from  an- 
other it  is  noteworthy  that  in  common  parlance 
"person"  and  "personal"  have  obtained  a  some- 
what different  meaning  from  that  in  which  the 

attack,  but  the  silent  desertion  of  intelligent  men,  who  go  away 
for  lack  of  instruction  which  they  can  understand  or  accept. 


154        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

theologian  speaks  of  a  "personal  God. "  I  take  it 
that  when  we  say  we  believe  in  a  personal  God  we 
ought  to  mean  that  the  highest  form  of  reality 
which  we  know  is  personality,  and  that  therefore 
God,  who  is  the  ultimate  reality,  must  be  at  least 
as  much  as  "personal"  implies.  In  that  sense 
a  personal  God  is  certainly  part  of  modern  belief. 
But  I  fear  that  the  phrase  is  often  wrongly  used  to 
mean  that  personality,  the  highest  form  of  reality 
known,  is  the  absolutely  highest  possible  form,  or, 
still  worse,  to  express  a  belief  in  an  arbitrary  being, r 
who  is  omnipotent,  but  only  sometimes  uses  his 
power. 

The  difficulty  is  that  the  man  in  the  street  has 
often  a  higher  ideal  than  the  man  in  the  pulpit; 
he  believes  intensely  that  the  orderly  universe  has 
a  purpose,  and  religion  means  to  him  very  precisely 
just  that  subordination,  previously  alluded  to,  of 
his  own  will  to  this  great  purpose  of  which  he  sees 
the  signs  everywhere.  It  seems  to  him  that  the 
man  in  the  pulpit  very  often  teaches  something 
less,  not  greater,  than  this,  and  he  rejects  such 
teaching,  not  because  he  is  less  religious,  but  be- 

1  As  an  indication  how  far  we  have  travelled  from  any  intelli- 
gent understanding  of  orthodox  theology  it  should  be  noted  that 
many  will  speak  of  God  as  "a  person, "  and  not  realize  at  all  that 
this  is  not  an  orthodox  statement  in  any  church  of  Christianity, 
except,  perhaps,  the  Unitarian. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       155 

cause  he  is  more  intelligent,  or,  at  all  events,  has 
more  knowledge,  than  previous  generations. 

But  that  is  not  all :  belief  in  God,  whatever  form 
it  may  take,  is  the  basis  of  theistic  religion.  Christ- 
ianity is  more  than  this;  it  is  essentially  a  re- 
ligion of  redemption.  Its  message  is  not  merely 
to  the  "healthy-minded, "  of  a  great  purpose  in  the 
world,  but  also  to  the  wanderers  and  to  the  sick 
who  ask  help  and  succour.  That  is  one  of  the 
main  gifts  of  religion ;  I  do  not  think  in  the  light 
of  the  study  of  the  history  of  religions  it  is  possible 
to  maintain  that  only  Christianity  has  given  it, 
and  that  no  other  faith  has  done  so.  On  the 
contrary,  I  feel  sure  that  the  same  gift  was  found 
by  the  initiates  in  many  of  the  heathen  Mysteries. 
But  certainly  Christianity  has  been  strong  because 
beyond  all  others  it  has  made  that  gift  to  suffering 
humanity.  It  has  done  so  more  by  means  of  the 
"consolations  of  religion,"  than  by  theological 
arguments,  but  it  has  also  connected  the  gift  with 
a  certain  definite  theory  to  which,  rather  than  to 
the  fact  of  religious  experience,  the  name  of 
Redemption  has  been  attached.  The  creeds 
crystallized  the  theory  into  the  phrase,  "For  us 
men  and  for  our  salvation."  It  is  important  to 
note  that  here  again  we  have  the  aftermath  of  the 
controversy  with  Gnosticism,  and  the  historian 


156        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

cannot  but  sometimes  fear  that  institutional 
Christianity  is  in  danger  because  it  refuses  to 
distinguish  the  truth  of  experience — the  same  in 
the  present  as  in  the  past — from  a  form  of  expres- 
sion which  served  its  day  against  the  Gnostics  and 
is  now  worn  out. 

The  theory  of  redemption  accepted  by  the 
Church  was  even  more  closely  united  with  the 
theory  of  creation  than  it  was  among  the  Gnostics. 
It  is  primarily  Pauline : 

Therefore  as  through  the  one  man  Sin  came  into 
the  world  and  through  Sin  came  Death,  and  so  Death 
passed  on  to  all  men  ...  so  then  as  by  one  trans- 
gression the  change  to  condemnation  fell  on  all  men, 
so  also  by  one  righteous  act  there  came  a  change  on 
all  men  to  an  acquittal  of  life,  for  just  as  by  the  dis- 
obedience of  the  One  man  the  Many  were  put  into 
the  position  of  sinners,  so  also  by  the  obedience  of 
the  One  man  the  Many  shall  be  put  into  the  position 
of  righteousness. 

Against  whom  is  St.  Paul  arguing?  That  is  a 
problem  which  is  very  hard  to  answer,  but  in  any 
case  his  statement  soon  came  to  serve  as  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Christian  theory  of  redemption.  It 
rests  on  two  points  regarded  as  equally  decisive: 
the  life  of  Adam  and  the  life  of  Jesus  are  counter- 
balancing historical  facts.  This  is  the  view  inher- 
ent in  the  creeds.     But  what  becomes  of  it  if  you 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       157 

admit  that  one  of  these  two  facts  is  not  historical 
at  all?  The  apologist  of  ecclesiastical  orthodoxy 
is  faced  by  this  difficulty,  and  whether  the  realiza- 
tion of  this  will  turn  out  to  be  the  beginning  of 
a  new  period  of  vigour  for  Christianity  or  of  de- 
cay and  death  depends  on  the  way  in  which  the 
situation  is  faced. 

The  attempt  to  explain  away  the  story  of  Crea- 
tion and  the  Fall  by  means  of  allegory,  as  Plutarch 
dealt  with  his  myths,  offers  no  permanent  help, 
though  it  is  at  first  sight  the  easiest  way,  for  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  the  story  was  originally 
meant  and  subsequently  accepted  as  literal  truth. 
Such  treatment  can  never  satisfy  the  educated  but 
untheological  public,  which  is  quick  to  see  in  it 
an  evasion  rather  than  a  solution  of  the  problem. 

The  alternative  is  to  face  the  facts,  and  study 
the  nature  of  religion.  What  is  it  that  forms  the 
experiential  basis  of  all  theories  of  redemption? 
It  is  the  feeling  of  the  blind  man  in  the  Gospel: 
"This  one  thing  I  know,  that  whereas  I  was  blind, 
now  I  see" — the  consciousness  of  health  after 
weakness  and  misery.  That  is  the  fundamental 
fact  of  all  "redemptive"  religions.  The  Welt- 
anschauung of  the  Gnostic,  and  of  the  Catholic, 
combined  with  experience,  was  bound  to  result 
in  Gnostic  and  Catholic  theories  of  redemption. 


158         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

But  we,  almost  unconsciously,  have  been  obliged 
to  take  over  from  geologists,  anthropologists,  and 
biologists  a  new  Weltanschauung1  which  tells  us 
that  men  have  lived  on  the  earth  for  innumerable 
centuries,  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  a  "Fall,"2 
that  men  have  been  always  imperfect,  but  also 
have  always,  though  with  many  relapses,  struggled 
upwards,  seeing  the  heights  and  stumbling  towards 
them.  To  express  the  facts  of  religious  conscious- 
ness in  the  language  of  this  Weltanschauung  is 
surely  not  an  impossibility,  even  though  it  has  not 
yet  been  done  adequately.  Certainly  it  includes 
the  consciousness  that  the  sufferings  of  the  right- 
eous have  always  been  the  price  of  progress,  and 
that  the  Purpose  which  we  recognize  as  Divine  not 
only  wills  the  progress  but  also  joins  in  the  suffer- 
ing. And  equally  certainly  it  includes  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  sick  and  miserable  that — to  use 
a  metaphor — a  strong  hand  has  reached  down  and 
helped  them  out  of  the  slough  into  which  they  had 
fallen  and  that  they  have  passed  out  of  their 
troubles. 

Just  as  the  beginning  of  the  creed  reflects  the 
struggle  against  Gnosticism,  so  also  does  the  end ; 

1  We  are  bound  to  do  so,  because  it  rests  on  observed  fact  which 
cannot  be  put  on  one  side. 

2  That  is  in  the  sense  of  a  single  great  historical  fact  which 
perverted  the  whole  race. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       159 

the  belief  in  the  "Resurrection  of  the  flesh"1  is 
purely  polemic  against  the  Gnostic  view  which 
separated  spirit  and  flesh,  making  the  spirit  eternal 
and  the  flesh  of  no  importance.  It  is  desirable  to 
understand  clearly  what  the  object  of  the  Church 
was,  because  here  also  this  was  unquestionably 
correct,  though  it  may  be  doubted  whether  it 
found  the  final  or  the  best  way  of  attaining  it. 

The  Gnostic  split  human  nature  into  two  parts, 
one  important,  the  other  unimportant.  Against 
this  the  Church  reacted,  and  said  in  effect  that  it  is 
impossible  to  split  up  human  nature  in  this  way; 
a  man  is  a  man,  and  is  not  a  fortuitous  combina- 
tion of  flesh  and  spirit,  and  action  is  not  action  by 
the  spirit  or  by  the  flesh,  but  by  the  whole  man. 
In  many  ways  that  is  a  healthy  doctrine  which 
commands  our  assent;  it  is  indubitably  true  of 
our  present  existence.  But  the  Catholic  Christian 
went  on  to  argue  that  therefore  it  must  necessarily 
be  so,  so  long  as  man  retains  his  identity.  The 
work  of  Athenagoras,  for  instance,  on  the  Resur- 
rection of  the  Dead  is  full  of  this  contention.  The 
difficulty  is  that  we  know  that  when  we  die  our 
bodies  remain  for  a  longer  or  shorter  period  in  the 
grave  and  are  ultimately  absorbed  by  the  earth. 

1  It  is,  in  view  of  the  loose  translation  familiar  to  us,  necessary 
to  note  that  the  Latin  is  resurrectionem  carnis,  not  corporis. 


160        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

If  personal  existence  is  only  possible  in  the  body  of 
flesh,  obviously  the  dead  remain  dead,  even  though 
they  may  rise  again  ultimately  in  a  general  resur- 
rection of  dead  bodies.  If  we  cannot  exist  as 
"we"  without  the  flesh,  no  one  whose  flesh  has 
died  is  still  alive.  *  That  position  was  not  impos- 
sible so  long  as  the  expectation  of  the  last  day  was 
imminent,  but  as  soon  as  that  receded  into  the 
background  the  difficulty  was  felt.  What  hap- 
pened was  that  the  older  teaching  of  St.  Paul 
was  partially  revived,  and  conflated  rather  than 
combined  with  the  simple  anti-Gnostic  doctrine 
of  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh. 

St.  Paul's  doctrine  was  quite  clear;  he  did  not 
believe  in  a  resurrection  of  the  flesh;  so  much  he 
conceded  to  his  Greek  opponents.  He  believed 
that  the  dead  would  rise  changed  into  spiritual 
beings,  and  that  the  living  would  be  changed  in 
the  same  way  but  without  dying.  That  doctrine 
he  applied  to  the  general  resurrection ;  the  question 
of  the  position  of  the  dead  between  their  death  and 
the  resurrection  he  does  not  touch  upon  clearly.3 

1  Because  if  the  ego  consists  of  flesh  and  spirit,  not  of  one  or  the 
other  alone,  so  long  as  one  part — in  this  case,  the  flesh — is 
obviously  dead,  the  ego  is  in  a  state  of  non-existence. 

2  2  Cor.,  iii.,  does  not,  I  think,  refer  to  the  resurrection,  but  to 
those  who — and  St.  Paul  regarded  this  as  the  normal  experience 
— survived  to  the  Parousia.  Philipp.  i.,  23  ff.,  however,  perhaps 
shows  that,  at  least  at  times,  he  held  more  "Greek"  views. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       161 

The  Catholics  soon  went  further  and  applied  it 
not  to  the  general  resurrection  but  to  the  state  of 
each  person  after  death.  Thus  there  arose  the 
view  that  after  death  man  exists  as  a  spiritual 
being,  but  that  at  the  general  resurrection  this 
spiritual  being  will  receive  back  the  body  which 
he  had  before.  Going  on  one  step  further  this 
prolonged  spiritual  life  was  regarded  as  continu- 
ing the  possibilities  of  development  and  improve- 
ment of  the  present  life,  even  though  its  general 
character  was  fixed. 

Such  is  the  general  outline  of  the  development  of 
the  Catholic  position  as  against  the  Gnostics,  and 
influenced  by  the  desire  to  exclude  the  pernicious 
doctrine  that  the  acts  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  spirit 
do  not  affect  each  other. 

If  we  wish  to  look  at  it  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  necessities  of  the  modern  man,  there  are  three 
things  to  claim  attention :  (i)  the  way  in  which  this 
belief  reacted  on  the  form  of  belief  in  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus;  (2)  the  value  of  Protestant  amend- 
ments of  the  Catholic  position;  (3)  the  general 
possibilities  which  seem  to  be  open  to  those  who 
think  in  the  manner  of  the  modern  man. 

(1)  The  original  form  of  the  belief  in  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  is  preserved  by  implication  in  1 
Cor.  xv.     The  end  of  the  Marcan  narrative  is 


162         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

missing  in  the  gospel  of  St.  Mark,  owing  to  the 
accidental  or  deliberate  mutilation  of  the  oldest 
copies, x  and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  followed 
either  by  Matthew  or  Luke.  St.  Paul  is  not  very 
explicit  on  the  subject,  but  he  clearly  regards  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  as  a  model  which  the  resur- 
rection of  Christians  will  ultimately  follow,  and 
he  distinctly  states  that  flesh  and  blood  will  not 
inherit  the  Kingdom  of  God.  As  it  is  quite  clear 
that  he  regards  Jesus  as  belonging  to  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  it  follows  that  he  regarded  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  as  not  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  of  a  spiritual 
body.  Obviously  this  is  more  in  agreement  with 
the  Greek  and  ultimately  with  the  Gnostic  point 
of  view  (though  Pauline  and  Gnostic  teaching  are 
in  the  main  opposed  to  one  another)  than  with  the 
Catholic  position,  and  Catholic  Christianity  re- 
wrote the  narrative  in  the  later  gospels,  empha- 
sizing the  belief  that  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
there  was  a  resurrection  or  resuscitation  of  the 
flesh.2     In  this  way,  owing  to  the  influence  of  the 

1  A  few  critics,  of  whom  Wellhausen  is  the  most  distinguished, 
think  that  the  original  narration  really  ended  with  Mk.  xvi.,  8,  but 
this  seems  to  me  very  improbable. 

1  It  is,  I  think,  possible  to  trace  a  great  part  of  the  details  of  the 
change  which  the  narration  underwent.  I  have  endeavoured  to 
do  this  with  considerable  minuteness  in  the  Historical  Evidence 
for  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ,  published  by  Williams  & 
Norgate  in  England  and  by  the  Putnams  in  America. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism      163 

struggle  with  Gnosticism,  the  Catholic  theologian 
was  brought  to  the  belief  in  the  resuscitation  of 
the  buried  flesh  of  Jesus,  although  this  was  not  the 
belief  of  St.  Paul * — and  if  it  was  not  the  belief  of 
St.  Paul  it  is  not  likely  that  it  was  the  belief  of 
the  other  disciples. 

(2)  The  Protestant  reformation  cut  out  from  the 
Catholic  theology  the  belief  in  a  period  of  further 
probation  and  purgation  after  death.  It  kept  the 
belief  in  the  final  judgment  of  the  last  day.  It 
did  so  really  because  the  belief  in  purgatory  had 
been  exploited  for  financial  advantage  by  the  baser 
elements  in  the  Roman  Church,  and  it  justified 
its  act  by  the  absence  of  proof  in  Scripture.  To 
the  modern  mind  Protestantism  on  this  subject, 
as  on  others,  seems  to  have  chosen  the  wrong  line. 
To  us  a  belief  in  purgatory,  which  implies  develop- 
ment and  further  education,  is  an  infinitely  more 
acceptable  doctrine  than  the  Protestant  presenta- 
tion of  a  period  of  age-long  changeless  waiting, 
followed  by  a  judgment  which  inflicts  eternal 
recompenses  for  temporal  acts.  We  no  longer 
can   dissociate  life   from   development,   or  from 

1  It  is  possible — I  think  even  probable — that  St.  Paul  believed 
in  a  transmutation  of  the  buried  flesh  into  the  risen  spirit,  but 
that  is  not  the  same  thing  as  resuscitation.  I  do  not  argue  that 
it  is  easier  to  believe,  or  has  better  evidence  in  its  support,  but 
merely  that  it  is  different  from  the  later  Catholic  teaching. 


164         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

continuity;  the  man  of  to-day  can  easily  believe 
that  after  death  his  life  will  pass  into  a  new  state 
of  existence,  conditioned  by  his  actions  here,  and 
influencing  his  position  in  still  remoter  states,  but 
he  not  so  much  rejects  as  is  unable  to  take  seriously 
the  common  Protestant  theology  which  asks  him  to 
believe  that  when  he  buries  the  body  of  some  friend 
he  is  to  think  that  "now  the  labourer's  task  is  o'er  " 
and  the  dead  are  to  "sleep  until  the  Resurrection 
day."  The  gospel  of  hope  and  faith  is  just  the 
reverse,  that  the  labourer's  task  is  not  over,  and 
that  the  life  which  has  here  been  faithful  in  a  few 
matters  has  gone  forth  to  renewed  service  in  some 
other  sphere  of  action.  What  we  need  is  teaching 
which  keeps  the  idea  of  purgation  and  education 
after  death,  and  finally  gives  up  the  Jewish  belief 
in  a  single  "day  of  judgment. " 

(3)  But  in  what  form  will  this  higher  service  be 
achieved?  There  we  pass  the  limits  of  human 
knowledge,  and  it  is  not  faith  but  superstition 
which  asks  us  to  attach  the  value  of  certain  know- 
ledge to  unsubstantiated  opinion.  Still,  so  far  as 
opinions  go,  there  seem  to  me  to  be  two  lines  upon 
which  modern  thought  is  advancing,  and  the 
Christian  churches,  if  they  wish  to  survive,  cannot 
ignore  them. 

First,    we   can   believe   in   the  permanence  of 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism      165 

individuality,  apart  from  the  body.  That  is  to 
say,  we  can  believe  that  when  we  die  our  bodies 
will  slowly  disappear  through  the  process  of  chem- 
ical dissolution,  but  that  we,  that  which  makes  us 
what  we  are,  will  survive ;  that  there  is  not  only  a 
continuity  of  life,  but  a  continuity  of  that  form 
of  consciousness  which  makes  our  life  what  it  is  as 
distinct  from  any  one  else's  form  of  life.  That  is  a 
possibility.  Of  course  if  we  believe  this,  we  are  not 
necessarily  obliged  to  say  that  we  believe  that 
that  will  be  the  last  form  of  change.  There  may 
be  something  more.  Obviously,  however,  we  have 
here  come  to  the  limits  of  human  understanding, 
and  it  is  really  not  profitable  to  carry  speculation 
any  further.  But  I  do  wish  to  express  my  own 
feeling  that  there  is  more  value  in  experimental 
research  in  this  direction  than  theologians  have 
admitted.  It  is  a  curious  thing  that,  as  a  matter 
of  practice,  the  theologian  who  believes  most 
strongly  in  the  survival  of  life  after  death  is  very 
often  the  last  person  to  admit  the  cogency  of  any 
evidence  which  goes  to  show  that  there  really  is 
such  a  survival.  We  find  that  the  men  who  have 
taken  most  interest  in  experimental  research  for 
any  signs  of  the  survival  of  consciousness  after 
death  are  not  theologians.  Yet,  though  it  is 
doubtful  how  far  the  evidence  takes  us  on  this 


166         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

line,  it  is  obvious  that  we  cannot  neglect  it,  if  we 
want  to  study  the  question  properly.  In  view  of 
the  extremely  distinguished  men  of  science  who  are 
— I  will  not  say  prepared  to  accept  such  evidence — ■ 
but  who  are  prepared  to  say  that  they  regard  it 
as  calling  for  further  research  I  do  not  think  it  is 
a  possible  attitude  for  theologians  to  put  it  all 
on  one  side.  Whether  the  evidence  will  ultimately 
prove  convincing  is  to  my  mind  still  doubtful. 
If  it  succeed  in  making  good  its  case,  the  matter  is, 
up  to  a  point,  settled.  If  it  fail,  renewed  emphasis 
will  be  laid  on  an  alternative  possibility. 

The  question  will  be  raised,  far  more  pointedly 
than  has  yet  been  the  case,  whether  we  may  not 
be  mistaken  in  thinking  that  the  difference  be- 
tween "you"  and  "me"  is  so  very  important. 
Suppose  that  that  is  only  the  limitation  of  life, 
not  the  expression  of  it;  that  what  happens  after 
death  is  that  the  life  which  has  been,  as  it  were, 
bottled  up  in  our  individualities,  is  released,  and 
goes  back  into  the  main  stream.  That  is  also  a 
survival  of  life  after  death.1  We  have  no  right 
even  to  say  that  in  that  case  it  does  not  matter 

1  Those  who  object  most  vigorously  to  this  view  seem  to 
confuse  the  survival  of  life  with  the  survival  of  memory.  Yet 
the  fact  that  few  of  us  have  any  memory  of  our  first  two  years 
of  existence  does  not  usually  make  us  deny  that  we  were  alive 
during  that  period. 


The  Church  and  Gnosticism       167 

what  we  do  with  our  own  little  bit  of  life.  It 
does  matter,  because  we  are  affecting  the  main 
stream  after  we  return  to  it.  That  is,  therefore, 
also  a  possibility. 

I  am  not  personally  able  to  go  any  further  as 
yet.  I  do  not  believe  in  a  resurrection  of  my  flesh ; 
I  do  believe  in  the  permanence  of  life,  but  I  do 
not  see  that  we  have  any  satisfactory  evidence  to 
enable  us  to  say  what  form  that  permanence  of 
life  will  take.  It  seems  clear  that  whatever  form 
it  may  take,  the  use  we  make  now  of  our  life  bears 
a  direct  relation  to  the  value  of  life  as  a  whole. 
Therefore,  it  is,  after  all,  the  attitude  of  deeper 
faith  to  be  content  to  acknowledge  our  ignorance 
of  the  details.  Faith  is  neither  a  substitute  for 
knowledge,  nor  opinion  unbased  on  evidence,  but 
trust  in  the  guidance  of  a  higher  power.  The 
men  of  to-day  do  not  feel  willing  to  accept  opinion 
on  points  outside  the  reach  of  observation,  but 
though  they  use  other  language  to  express  it, 
they  are  willing  to  walk,  unafraid,  through  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,  because  they  trust 
even  then  the  guidance  which  they  have  followed 
in  the  days  of  their  strength. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CHURCH  AND  UNINSTRUCTED  CHRISTIANITY 

Vulgar  Christentum — Its  Christology — History  and  Experience — 
Docetism — Its  Opposite — Catholic  Christology — Applica- 
cation  to  Christian  Experience — The  Modernist's  Position. 

THE  Christianity  of  the  uninstructed  man1 
forms  in  some  ways  a  connecting  link  be- 
tween Gnosticism  and  Catholicism,  though 
it  was  infinitely  nearer  to  the  latter.  It  was 
for  long  somewhat  overlooked  by  historians, 
and  the  documents  representing  it  were  explained 
away  or  neglected  altogether,  but  in  recent  years 
it  has  been  brought  to  the  front  under  various  as- 
pects by  H.  Usener2  and  C.  Schmidt  in  Germany,3 
and  by  F.  C.  Conybeare  in  England.  Usener  and 
Conybeare  speak  of  adoptionist  Christianity,  but 
Schmidt's  name  of  vulgar  Christentum  is  a  more 
satisfactory    name.4     From    the    nature    of    the 

1  By  this  somewhat  clumsy  periphrasis  I  am  trying  to  find  an 
equivalent  for  the  German  vulgar  Christentum. 

3  Especially  in  his  Weihnachtsfest. 

3  Acta  Pauli,  pp.  183  ff. 

*  Especially  since  in  some  ways  some  forms  of  this  type  of 
thought  were  at  least  as  much  docetic  as  adoptionist. 

168 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  169 

case  there  are  no  perfect  representations  in  litera- 
ture, but  II.  Clement,  Hermas,  the  Acts  of  Paul, 
perhaps  the  Odes  of  Solomon  and  Acts  of  John, 
and  even  the  gospel  of  Peter  may  be  taken  as 
typical  examples.  One  of  the  most  pressing  needs 
of  modern  research  is  a  good  monograph  of  this 
subject,  focusing  the  various  subordinate  questions, 
but  at  present  it  is  not  possible  to  do  more  than 
indicate  its  outlines. 

The  thought  of  the  "uninstructed  Christian" 
was  simple:  his  view  was  that  the  world  was 
created  good  (therefore  he  was  not  a  Gnostic); 
and  that  man  had  been  given  the  special  favour  of 
being  the  son  of  God,1  but  had  lost  this  relation- 
ship to  his  Father  through  the  Fall.  From  that 
moment  history  had  become  a  struggle  between 
God,  who  set  to  work  to  counteract  the  Fall  by 
means  of  his  chosen  people,  Israel,  and  the  prince 
of  this  world,  the  devil,  who  resisted  the  efforts  of 
God,  announced  himself  to  be  God,  and  bound 
all  humanity  to  himself  by  means  of  the  lusts  of 
the  flesh.  The  result  of  the  devil's  machinations 
was  ignorance,  error,  pleasure,  and  death,  which 
could  only  be  abolished  by  the  ultimate  judgment 
of  God.  But  in  his  mercy  God  sent  his  holy  spirit 
into  the  Virgin  Mary  in  order  to  redeem  men  and  to 

1  Cf.  loc.  cit.,  3,  38. 


170         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

destroy  the  dominion  of  evil  over  flesh  by  becom- 
ing flesh.1  This  holy  spirit  which  thus  became 
incarnate  was  the  same  which  had  spoken  through 
the  Jewish  prophets,  so  that  the  Christian  faith 
rested  throughout  on  the  Spirit — the  Spirit  who 
had  given  "  the  prophets  "  to  Israel  and  later  on 
had  given  "  the  gospel"  through  the  Christ  to  the 
Christians. 

This  Christology  is  not  the  same  as  that  which 
became  traditional.  The  incarnation  is  the  in- 
carnation of  the  Spirit.  Though  such  Christians 
spoke  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  they  meant  by  the 
Son  the  being  of  flesh  which  had  been  the  taber- 
nacle of  the  Spirit  and  had  been  taken  up  into  the 
Godhead,  so  that  the  Trinity  consisted  of  the 
Father,  Spirit,  and  Jesus  in  whom  the  Spirit  had 
been  and  was  incarnate.  That  is  not  the  same, 
we  must  observe,  as  the  Trinity  of  orthodox 
Catholic  theology,  because  it  does  not  distinguish 
between  the  Son,  or  Logos,  and  the  Spirit. 

The  Shepherd  of  Hermas  (Simil.  5)  is  one  of  the 
most  elaborate  examples  of  this  type  of  doctrine 
of  the  incarnation.  He  describes  how  the  Spirit 
came  to  help  mankind,  and  took  up  its  abode  in  the 

1  In  some  varieties  of  thought  the  baptism  took  the  place  of  the 
birth,  and  indeed  there  was  for  several  centuries  a  confusion  of 
thought  on  the  point,  which  is  reflected  in  the  history  of  Christmas 
and  Epiphany,  as  Usener  has  shown. 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  171 

flesh  of  a  certain  human  being  who  is  never  men- 
tioned, but  is  obviously  intended  for  Jesus.  As 
a  reward  for  perfect  life  this  human  being  was 
rewarded  by  the  Father  and  the  Spirit  (who  is  also 
called  the  Son  in  this  connection),  by  being  taken 
up  into  the  Godhead,  and  the  same  reward  is 
offered  to  all  who  should  live  in  accordance  with 
his  example. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  this  type  of  thought  is 
known  as  adoptionist,  though  it  is  not  always  clear 
at  what  moment  the  adoption  of  Jesus  into  the 
Godhead  is  supposed  to  take  place — birth,  baptism 
or  resurrection.  To  point  out  its  logical  defects  is 
not  hard,  and  the  better  theology  of  Catholic 
Christianity  reacted  against  its  errors,  but  as  a 
preliminary  we  must  note  the  strength  of  this 
popular  Christianity. 

It  represented  the  life  of  Jesus  as  a  career  of 
ascetic  purity,  culminating  in  apotheosis,  and  it 
offered  to  Christians  the  reward  which  had  already 
been  given  to  the  Christ.  God  had  become  man 
in  order  that  men  might  become  God.  The  une- 
ducated Christian  stated  it  crudely,  but  in  the  effort 
to  improve  away  the  crudeness  theologians  in  the 
end  lost  part  of  a  necessary  element  of  religious 
thought. 

The  first  Christians  spoke  of  Christ  as  the  first 


172         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

born  among  many  brethren,  and  the  believers  as 
joint  heirs  with  Christ.  "As  many  as  are  led  by 
the  Spirit  of  God,  they  a*re  the  sons  of  God," 
said  St.  Paul,  applying  to  the  faithful  the  same 
word  as  he  does  to  the  Christ.  But  in  the  desire  to 
emphasize  the  greatness  of  Jesus  later  Christian- 
ity sought  to  obtain,  as  it  were,  a  heightened  con- 
trast, and  by  ignoring  that  side  of  the  teaching  of 
primitive  Christianity,  obscured  the  teaching  of 
St.  Paul  which  represented  the  Christian  as  well 
as  the  Christ  as  a  son  of  God. r 

But  the  ordinary  man  in  the  second  century  had 
not  yet  developed  this  tendency.  His  real  hope 
was  that  by  means  of  his  religion  he  could  become 
a  son  of  God,  and  he  had  not  yet  learnt  that  curi- 
ous trick  of  language  which  distinguishes  between 
the  "son  of  God "  and  the  "child  of  God. "  We  all 
know  how  in  traditional  teaching  it  is  quite  a 
commonplace  to  say  that  we  are  all  children  of 
God,  hardly  ever  to  say  that  the  Christian  is  a 
son  of  God.  The  custom  is  partly  based  on 
reverence,  partly  on  deistic  tradition,  and  partly 
on  mere  lack  of  clearness  of  thought. 

All  this  is  only  to  say  in  other  words  that  this 

1  Cf.  also  Heb.  i.,  I :  'God  who  at  sundry  times,  and  in  divers 
manners,  spake  to  the  fathers  by  the  prophets,  in  these  last  days 
spake  to  us  by  a  son  "  (vl$,  not  t£  viy). 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  173 

vulgar  Christentum  kept  a  vivid  consciousness  of 
the  primitive  belief  of  the  first  Greek  Christians 
that  the  Lord  was  the  centre  of  the  community, 
that  the  Lord  was  the  Spirit,  that  the  Lord  was 
also  Jesus,  and  that  they  also  possessed  the  Spirit. 
But  it  was  inev italic?  tfiat  these  simple  affirmations 
of  the  religious  consciousness  should  on  closer  ex- 
amination be  developed  into  a  connected  system 
of  theology.  Attempts  were  made  on  various 
lines,  and  the  ultimate  development  of  Christian 
theology  represents  in  the  main  the  verdict  of  the 
more  intelligent  and  philosophical  theologians  upon 
the  one-sided  efforts  of  vulgar  Christentum,  to  cope 
with  the  rival,  or  perhaps  more  properly  comple- 
mentary, claims  of  historical  fact  and  religious 
experience. 

In  the  first  place  there  was  the  line  struck  out 
by  the  Christian  who,  starting  from  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  centre  of  his  life  with  "Christ, "  and 
the  identification  of  this  Christ  with  the  Jesus  of 
history,  under  the  influence  of  the  conviction  that 
the  Lord  is  the  Spirit  went  on  to  say  that  this 
Jesus,  who  was  the  Christ,  was  also  a  spiritual 
being  in  the  time  of  his  human  life  in  the  same  sense 
as  he  is  a  spiritual  being  now.  That  is  to  say,  they 
threw  back  the  conclusions  of  religious  experience 
on  to  the  past,  and  subordinated  historical  evidence 


174         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

to  their  own  spiritual  experience.  The  result  was 
the  statement  that  Jesus  had  never  been  a  man  of 
flesh  and  blood,  because  he  had  always  been  spirit, 
and  that  if  he  had  seemed  to  be  flesh  and  blood,  he 
was  not  really  so ;  he  had  adopted  the  form  of  flesh 
and  blood  for  the  purpose  of  manifesting  himself, 
but  not  the  reality  of  it — it  was  only  appearance. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  is  really  the  negation  of 
the  original  position:  it  destroys  the  parallelism 
between  the  Christ  and  the  Christian,  and  it 
rapidly  becomes  a  Gnostic  view  of  the  flesh,  though 
without  the  Gnostic  view  of  creation.  The  Acts  of 
John  is  probably  a  fair  specimen  of  this  "  docetic  " x 
branch  of  vulgar  Christentum.  Nevertheless  we 
must,  I  believe,  see  in  it  a  sincere  attempt  to  act 
in  the  supposed  interests  of  religion.  It  was  an 
effort  to  reconstruct  history  in  accordance  with 
religious  experience,  and  it  is  extraordinarily 
interesting  to  notice  that  the  same  thing  is  happen- 
ing at  the  present  day  in  the  movement  headed  by 
Professor  Drews  in  Germany  and  by  Professor 
Smith  in  America.  These  scholars  have  rejoiced  in 
arguments  showing  that  there  never  was  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  not  because  they  are 
enemies  of  religion,  but  because  they  think  that 

1  From  5oKeivf  to  seem,  because  the  humanity  of  Jesus  was  only 
in  semblance. 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  175 

they  are  doing  a  service  to  religion  by  cutting  it 
loose  from  history.  To  a  quite  extraordinary 
extent  this  repeats  the  history  of  the  second  cent- 
ury, and  the  controversy  whether  the  Jesus  whom 
men  knew  as  the  centre  of  their  religion  had  ever 
been  a  real  man  of  flesh  and  blood. 

Such  was  the  result  of  beginning  with  religious 
experience,  and  attempting  to  make  it  a  substitute 
for  historical  evidence.  The  opposite  line  of 
thought  was  also  followed.  There  were  those  who 
felt  that  their  knowledge  of  facts  justified  them  in 
the  statement  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  really 
been  a  man,  a  human  being.  They  would  yield 
nothing  to  those  who  told  them  that  his  humanity 
was  in  any  sense  merely  apparent.  Starting  from 
this  they  went  on  to  argue  that  therefore  the 
Christ  of  religion  must  possess  to  all  eternity  a 
body  of  flesh  and  blood.  He  might  be  in  heaven 
at  the  right  hand  of  God,  but  he  was,  nevertheless, 
a  Jesus  with  flesh  and  blood,  and  it  was  he,  that 
man  of  flesh  and  blood,  who  was  to  be  accepted  as 
the  adequate  centre  of  religion.  The  basis  of  the 
argument  was  the  facts  of  history.  If  anyone  felt 
that  his  religious  experience  did  not  agree  with  it, 
and  urged  that  the  Lord  was  a  Spirit,  it  only 
proved  that  his  theology  was  heretical  and  his 
religion  a  vain  thing. 


176        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

These  Christians  were  doing  the  exact  reverse  of 
the  docetic  wing  of  vulgar  Christentum.  They  were 
true  to  the  facts  of  history,  and  tried  to  make 
religious  experience  yield  to  them,  by  forcibly 
interpreting  it  just  as  their  opponents  were  forcibly 
interpreting  history  in  mistaken  loyalty  to  the 
experience  of  religion.  Each  was  doing  the  right 
thing  in  the  wrong  place,  and  it  would  be  weari- 
some to  try  and  follow  out  the  development  of  the 
ensuing  controversies  which,  in  different  forms, 
went  on  for  centuries,  but  ir  he  interests  of  a  much- 
abused  class  the  fact  is  worth  emphasizing  that 
the  effort  of  the  theologians — as  distinct  from  the 
uninstructed  Christians — was  to  do  justice  to  both 
sides  of  the  question.  On  the  one  hand,  they  tried 
to  do  justice  to  the  facts  of  history  by  historical 
methods.  Their  methods  were  not  ours,  and  their 
reconstruction  of  facts  was  not  the  same  as  ours 
would  be,  but  they  did  their  best  according  to  the 
knowledge  of  those  days.  They  insisted  that 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  really  been  human,  really 
flesh  and  blood,  because  they  had  the  records,  and 
they  judged  history  by  historical  methods.  On 
the  other  hand,  they  tried  to  do  justice  to  the 
facts  of  religious  experience  by  insisting  that  the 
centre  of  our  religious  life  is  spirit,  and  not  flesh 
and  blood.     Therefore  they  tried  to  settle  all  the 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  177 

different  forms  of  this  controversy  in  such  a  way 
that,  when  it  was  a  matter  of  history,  justice 
should  be  done  to  the  facts  of  history,  and 
when  it  was  a  matter  of  religion,  to  the  experi- 
ence of  religious  life.  It  was  impossible  to 
find  any  single  formula  which  covered  the 
whole  case,  and  practically  what  happened  was 
that  the  Church  occupied  itself  for  several  centuries 
in  saying  "No"  in  various  accents  of  emphasis 
to  inadequate  propositions  which  were  presented 
for  the   speedy   solution A  of   insoluble   problems. 

For  instance,  an  attempt  was  made  to  say: 
"Jesus  is  God:  we  know  that  through  religion. 
He  was  also  man:  we  know  that  through  history. 
Therefore,  he  must  have  been  something  between 
the  two,  a  sort  of  inferior  god,  or  an  exaggerated 
superman."  But  the  intellect  of  the  Church 
said  that  this  was  neither  history  nor  religion,  but 
a  confusion  of  thought.  And  Arianism  and  its 
successors  were  never  accepted. 

Or  again,  it  was  sometimes  said,  "Jesus  was 
really  two  persons.  He  was  a  human  person  and 
a  divine  person. "  But  the  intellect  of  the  Church 
replied  that  this  was  also  impossible,  because 
personality  must  be  one.  And  what  is  known  as 
Nestorianism  *  was  rejected. 

1  It  is  very  doubtful  whether — to  speak  paradoxically — Nes- 


178         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

Thus  in  the  end  a  series  of  statements  was 
developed  which  the  scoffer  can  describe — though 
very  unjustly — as  taking  away  with  one  hand 
everything  that  has  been  given  with  the  other; 
and  the  reason  why  that  way  of  dealing  with  the 
matter  is,  after  all,  the  most  successful,  is  the  fact — 
so  well  known  to  the  schoolmen — that  all  definition 
is  negation.  Directly  we  begin  to  define  anything 
we  imply  that  it  is  not  something  else.  Can  we 
do  that  with  God?  The  difficulty  is  that  we  can- 
not say  God  is  everything,  and  at  the  same  time 
define  him;  because,  directly  we  do,  we  begin  to 
say  something  which  we  have  at  once  to  unsay, 
since,  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  definition,  it  is  also  a  nega- 
tion, and  we  must  not  deny  anything  of  God.1 

If  we  apply  this  a  little  further  to  the  person  of 
Christ,  we  see  the  necessary  conclusion.  It  was 
necessary  to  say  "man,"  because  of  history;  and 
to  say  "God"  because  of  experience.  In  so  far 
as  Christ  was  God  the  epithets  of  eternal,  omni- 
potent, omniscient,  everlasting,  were  inevitable. 
In  so  far  as  he  was  man  they  were  impossible. 
And  yet  no  one  could  say  that  the  human  Jesus 


torius  was  really  a  Nestorian;  cf.  Bethune  Baker's  Nestorius  and 
his  Teaching. 

1  Unless  we  can  prove  that  there  is  no  reality  in  that  which  we 
deny. 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  179 

was  limited,  temporary,  or  imperfect,  and  the 
divine  Christ  eternal,  omnipotent,  omniscient, 
everlasting,  because,  if  so,  the  one  personality  was 
split  into  two.  That  was  also  impossible;  the 
facts  of  history  were  decisive,  Jesus  was  one  person, 
and  not  two. 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  when  the  intellect  of 
the  Church  finally  attempted  to  sum  up  the  results, 
it  was  obliged  to  say  that  in  the  Christ  there  was  a 
divine  nature  and  a  human  nature  so  united  in  one 
person  that  they  could  not  be  separated,  and  yet 
so  that  they  must  on  no  account  be  confused. 
Unless  men  knew  what  they  meant  by  it  they  could 
scarcely  say  that  Jesus  was  God,  but  if  they  knew 
they  not  only  could  but  must  say  it,  for  it  meant 
that  the  union  between  these  two  elements,  as 
we  should  say,  or  two  natures,  as  the  early  theo- 
logians said,  in  the  one  person  was  so  complete 
that  by  a  process  of  mutual  exchange  (the  com- 
municatio  idiomatum)  all  epithets  could  be  applied 
to  the  one  nature  which  were  applicable  to  the 
other. 

It  is  a  maze  of  theological  subtlety  which  we 
immediately  enter  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  express 
our  thoughts  along  these  lines  of  reasoning;  and 
only  those  who  by  the  expenditure  of  much  time 
have  learnt  to  use  the  language  of  the  first  six» 


180        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

centuries  can  really  appreciate  how  admirable  it 
is. 

It  is  not  our  language.  We  cannot  "talk  theo- 
logy "  half  so  well  in  our  language  as  the  Greeks 
could  talk  it  in  theirs  sixteen  hundred  years  ago, 
and  the  pity  is  that  so  many  people  either  pour 
scorn  on  these  subtle  formulae,  or  apply  them 
mechanically  to  other  problems,  without  either 
understanding  their  origin,  or  sympathizing  with 
their  purpose.  I  should  be  the  last  person  in  the 
world  to  suggest  that  we  can  take,  for  instance, 
the  Athanasian  Creed  as  a  representation  of 
modern  thought,  or  correct  in  its  prognosis  of 
damnation  for  the  heterodox,  but  I  am  prepared 
to  say  that  if  you  can,  by  study,  teach  yourself  the 
way  to  use  it,  there  is  no  document  which  more 
adequately  struggles  to  represent  two  sides  of 
truth  simultaneously  than  the  Athanasian  Creed 
does.  I  am  bound  to  add  that  when  you  have 
done  this  you  may  have  reason  to  object  to  its  use 
by  an  ordinary  congregation,  because  it  is  unedify- 
ing  to  see  or  hear  intelligent  people  reciting  in 
public  worship  documents  which  they  do  not  under- 
stand, probably  misinterpret,  and  certainly  dislike. 

Nevertheless  the  fact  that  the  Athanasian 
Creed  is  so  unintelligible  ought  to  remind  us  that 
we  have  still  to  deal  with  the  perpetual  struggle 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  181 

between  history  and  experience.  On  the  one  hand 
religion  is  a  matter  of  personal,  intimate  experi- 
ence ;  its  centre  is  for  each  of  us  in  our  own  hearts ; 
and  our  own  experience  is  valid  for  ourselves.  It 
is  here,  and  it  is  now.  Anything  which  takes 
away  from  the  full  force  of  that  perception  is 
wrong.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  the  result 
of  a  historical  process,  and  are  ourselves  "historical 
facts. "  Even  our  most  intimate  experience  is 
conditioned  by  history,  because  we  ourselves 
belong  to  it,  and  we  cannot  without  harm  attempt 
to  sever  ourselves  from  the  historical  development 
which  has  produced  us,  and  which  conditions  our 
experience.  Therefore  we  have  the  same  struggle 
as  our  spiritual  ancestors  had.  If  we  wish  to  be 
intelligent  and  intelligible,  we  cannot  state  religious 
experience  without  taking  the  facts  of  history  into 
consideration,  and  for  the  religious  side  of  life 
history  means  the  history  of  the  whole  of  Chris- 
tianity— not  merely  of  its  beginning.  We  cannot 
without  loss  cut  ourselves  loose  from  it,  and  the 
problem  is,  to  make  ourselves  the  heirs  of  history 
without  becoming  its  slaves. 

But  I  do  not  desire  to  labour  that  obvious  truth 
so  much  as  to  come  into  closer  contact  with  the 
problem  presented  by  the  doctrine  of  the  "two 
natures"  in  Christ. 


1 82         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

It  is  perfectly  plain  that,  as  it  stands  at  present, 
this  doctrine  belongs  to  a  past  generation.  We 
can  only  appreciate  it  with  difficulty,  by  learning 
the  language  in  which  it  is  expressed.  If  we  yield 
to  the  temptation  to  put  it  on  one  side,  we  soon 
find  ourselves  lapsing  into  mere  homiletic  platitude 
or  into  some  form  of  vulgar  Christentum — in  other 
words,  into  heresy.  It  is  therefore  necessary  to 
grapple  with  it,  and  develop  it  until  we  bring  it 
once  more  into  touch  with  the  facts  of  life  as  we 
see  them. 

We  have,  as  an  intellectual  legacy  from  the  past, 
the  doctrine  of  Jesus  as  a  being,  a  person,  with  two 
natures,  human  and  divine.  Leave  that  on  one 
side  and  turn  to  our  own  self-knowledge.  Is  it  not 
true  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  our  own  selves 
there  is  a  double  element  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  all 
of  us  have  constantly  to  deal  with  two  elements  in 
life  in  ourselves  and  in  other  people."  There  is, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  element  which  makes  it  ex- 
traordinarily hard  for  us  to  understand  anybody 
else ;  which  makes  it  extraordinarily  hard  for  any 
two  people  to  work  together  without  quarrelling; 
which  makes  us  all  have  a  tendency  to  quarrel  and 
fight  for  our  own  supposed  advantages — the  fact 
that  we  resist  it  is  the  essence  of  civilization. 
This  element  which  limits,  which  separates,  which 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  183 

drags  down,  although  there  are  certain  objections 
to  the  use  of  the  word,  may  fairly  be  called  "hu- 
man, "  though  the  difficulty  with  all  these  points 
is  that  thought  is  struggling  with  language,  and 
language  often  gets  the  better  of  the  struggle. 
Still  I  think  that  I  run  no  risk  of  being  misunder- 
stood in  saying  that  this  limiting,  separating,  and 
dividing  element,  of  which  we  are  all  conscious, 
is  "human"  nature  in  the  narrower  sense. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  conscious  of  another 
element  which  is  unifying,  which  brings  people 
together,  which  enables  us  at  times  to  feel  that  we 
are  understanding  each  other  in  some  sense  more 
than  the  mere  intellectual  comprehension  of  care- 
fully chosen  phraseology.     We  are,   as  we  say, 
"in  touch"  with  one  another;  we  feel  that  we  pass 
our  normal  limitations,  and  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  truth  that  we  are  really  all  "one"  is 
greater  than  the  truth  that  we  are  all  separate,  for 
we  are  not  so  much  coming  together  as  realizing 
that  on  the  highest  side  of  life  we  have  never  been 
separated  at  all.     That  is  the  element  which  is  at 
the  centre  of  all  corporate  life,  and  makes  for  co- 
operation, for  unity,  for  peace,  for  civilization,  and 
seems    to    me    truly    to    deserve    the    name    of 
divine,    because    nowhere    can    I    see    anything 
higher. 


184        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

But  this  is  the  application  to  personality1  as  a 
whole  of  what  Catholic  theology — a  different  thing 
from  vulgar  Christentum — said  of  the  one  person  of 
Jesus,  and  though  it  is  possible  that  the  adjectives, 
human  and  divine,  and  the  substantives,  nature 
and  person,  could  with  advantage  be  replaced  by 
a  different  phraseology,  it  is  in  this  kind  of  develop- 
ment that  Christian  theology  has  the  opportunity 
to  keep  the  historical  continuity  of  a  great  intel- 
lectual tradition,  and  at  the  same  time  to  join 
hands  with  modern  psychology.2 

Moreover,  this  line  of  thought  enables  us  to 
see  more  clearly  than  any  other  that  progress, 
not  only  in  thought,  but  in  life  as  a  whole,  is  the 
conscious  development  of  the  one  side  and  the 
conscious  keeping  in  check  of  the  other  side  of 
personality.  That  seems  to  me  the  intellectual 
statement  of  the  real  work  of  life:  the  conscious 
effort  of  the  individual  and  of  society  to  develop 


1  If  anyone  will  read,  for  instance,  Dorner's  History  of  the 
Doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  he  will,  I  think,  probably  gain 
the  impression  that  the  real  contribution  of  the  classical  period 
of  Christian  theology  was  to  state  the  problem:  "What  is  person- 
ality? "  and  to  suggest  the  lines  on  which  it  must  be  faced.  Here 
again  it  is,  to  my  mind,  the  modernist  who  is  really  taking  his 
inheritance  and  trying  to  develop  it. 

■  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  that  I  believe  that  this  amounts  to 
much  the  same  as  Dr.  Sanday's  position  in  his  Christologiest 
though  it  is  differently  expressed. 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  185 

the  divine  element  which  makes  for  unity,  for 
peace,  for  co-operation. 

Is  not  this  exactly  what  the  best  early  Christian 
theology  expressed  by  its  Logos  doctrine?    We 
must  of  course  allow  for  the  fact  that  the  men  of 
that  generation,  in  theology  as  in  everything  else, 
started  with  a  general  hypothesis  and  worked 
inwards:  we  start  from  the  other  end  and  work 
outwards,  as  we  have  learnt  to  do  in  every  branch 
of   science.     The   theologian    cannot    claim   any 
right  to  make  use  of  a  method  which  has  been  given 
up  by  everyone  else.     But  allowing  for  this  differ- 
ence of  attitude  the  "  Logos  doctrine  "  of  the  Church 
and  some  such  analysis  of  life  as  that  sketched 
above  are  really  two  statements  of  the  same  view. 
This  brings  me  to  one  of  the  burning  questions  of 
modern    theological    Christian    thought.     It    is 
often  said  that  the  "Modernist"  is  undermining 
or  even  denying  the  central  doctrine  of  the  divinity 
of  Christ,  and  the  answer  to  this  accusation  is 
closely  connected  with  the  general  subject  of  this 
chapter.     The  "Modernist"  believes  that  he  is 
the  true  heir  of  the  Catholic  theology,  while  his 
opponents  seem  to  him  to  represent  a  recrudescence 
of  some  of  the  one-sided  and  intellectually  inde- 
fensible positions  of  vulgar  Christentum. 

The  doctrine  of  the  "two  natures"  and  the 


1 86         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

Johannine  Logos  doctrine  of  which  it  is  the  logical 
conclusion  are  the  expression  of  the  view  which, 
if  we  accept  certain  metaphysical  forms  of  state- 
ment, may  reasonably  be  taken  of  a  certain  com- 
plex of  facts  belonging  partly  to  history,  partly  to 
religious  experience.  Although  subject  on  the  one 
hand  to  development,  so  far  as  it  deals  only  with 
the  life  of  Jesus,  and  says  nothing  about  other 
"persons,"  and,  on  the  other,  to  amendment  so 
far  as  the  historical  facts  dealt  with  obtain  a 
different  complexion  in  the  light  of  wider  know- 
ledge and  deeper  study,  it  remains  one  of  the 
triumphs  of  human  intellect,  and  the  Modernist 
has  not  the  slightest  hesitation  in  accepting  it. 
But  it  seems  to  him  that  the  doctrines  often  pre- 
sented to  him  by  those  who  think  that  they  are 
orthodox  are  something  quite  different.  Men 
have  forgotten  or  put  on  one  side  as  unintelligible 
the  Catholic  theology,  and  have  set  up  a  rival 
which  puts  "the  historic  Jesus"  in  the  place  of  the 
Logos.  It  is  historically  inaccurate  and  spiritually 
unsatisfying.  It  is  the  sort  of  theology  which 
sings  sentimental  hymns  about, 

Those  mighty  hands  which  rule  the  sky  no  earthly 

toil  refuse, 
The  Maker  of  the  stars  on  high  an  humble  trade 

pursues. 


Church  and  Uninstructed  Christianity  187 

That  is  language  which  the  extremest  extension  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  communicatio  idiomatum  could 
scarcely  justify,  and  as  most  of  those  using  it  are 
wholly  ignorant  of  that  profound  and  subtle  dogma 
it  is  in  their  mouths  the  merest  recrudescence  of  the 
Jesus-cultus  of  vulgar  Christentum. 

The  Modernist  worships  the  Logos :  not  because 
of  any  ecclesiastical  authority,  but  because  heart 
and  mind  agree  to  tell  him  that  this  is  the  way 
of  truth  in  which  his  fathers  walked.  He  is  not 
prepared  to  narrow  down  his  perception  of  the 
Logos,  or  (to  use  more  theological  language)  to 
sacrifice  his  recognition  of  the  divine  working  of  the 
Logos  in  all  time  and  in  all  life  in  order  to  obtain 
a  spurious  heightening  of  contrast  for  the  recogni- 
tion which  he  gives  to  the  Logos  in  Jesus. 

Moreover,  personally — I  do  not  dare  speak  for 
all  Modernists — I  feel  that  these  admirable  and 
penetrating  doctrines  of  Catholic  theology  are  not 
intelligible  to  ordinary  congregations.  I  know 
that  I  cannot  state  them  equally  well  in  any  other 
language.  But  I  also  know  that  in  this  language, 
however  admirable,  they  are  not  intelligible  to 
most  people,  because  the  technical  terms  are  un- 
known to  them,  or,  still  worse,  have  popularly 
a  different  meaning.  Therefore  I  prefer  to  restate 
these  truths  in  modern  language,  by  which  I  mean 


1 88        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

in  a  different  phraseology,  and  I  dissent  wholly 
from  those  who  try  to  achieve  what  they  call 
restatement  by  using  the  old  phraseology  in  a  new 
sense.  The  Catholic  theology  is  magnificent: 
but  it  is  not  intelligible  except  to  properly  trained 
theological  intellects.  My  wish  is  to  make  the 
view  of  life  which  it  represents  intelligible  by  put- 
ting it  into  modern  language,  nor  do  I  find  this  an 
impossible  task,  but  I  admire  the  language  of  the 
old  theologians  too  much  not  to  protest  against 
attempts  to  mutilate  it  or  to  pretend  that  it 
speaks  in  our  phraseology.  Some  of  the  ostensible 
defenders  of  Christian  theology  understand  neither 
its  history  nor  its  meaning,  and  the  parody  which 
they  present  is  the  greatest  intellectual  danger 
which  Christianity  has  now  to  face. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CONCLUSION 

Christianity  as  Movement — Modern  Requirements — Justice — 
The  Atonement — Suffering — The  Observation  of  Religious 
Facts — Its  Effect — The  Churches  and  Research  in  Theo- 
logy— The  Training  of  the  Clergy — The  Churches  and 
Schism — The  Theory  of  Ordination — The  Social  Revolution 
— The  Need  of  a  Higher  Ethical  Vision. 

IN  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  endeavoured 
to  sketch  the  developments  of  the  heritage 
handed  down  to  us  from  the  Early  Church  in 
the  form  of  theology,  ethics,  and  ministry.  But 
far  more  important  than  to  trace  the  process 
described  in  its  details,  many  of  which  are  certainly 
obscure  and  possibly  capable  of  other  interpre- 
tation in  the  light  of  increasing  knowledge,  is  the 
recognition  that  progressive  movement,  and  not 
the  retention  of  a  fixed  position,  has  throughout 
been  the  condition  of  vigorous  life. 

By  fulfilling  that  condition  the  Early  Church 
succeeded  in  giving  to  the  world  a  theology  which 
satisfied  the  necessity  of  speaking  in  a  language 
intelligible  to  that  generation.     It  was  no  more 

189 


190         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

final  than  any  attempt  of  the  finite  to  explain  the 
infinite  can  ever  be.  But  it  was  an  adequate 
representation  of  the  reaction  of  the  highest 
spiritual  life  upon  the  keenest  intellects  of  their 
time. 

In  the  same  way  the  Church  produced  a  system 
of  sacraments  and  a  ministry  to  which  we  cannot 
refuse  the  praise  of  having  built  up  the  spiritual 
life  of  Western  civilization,  even  though  we  may 
recognize  that  the  theory  based  upon  them  was 
often  erroneous,  and  that  in  the  end  the  abuse  of 
the  system  was  often  disastrous.  Similarly  also 
it  provided  a  combination  of  world-renouncing 
and  world-accepting  ethics  which  for  generations 
proved  a  satisfactory  guide  to  the  efforts  of  the  best 
men  to  serve  the  society  to  which  they  belonged 
without  forgetting  that  higher  world  of  eternal 
realities  of  which  all  enjoy  a  vision  at  times, 
though  none  see  it  permanently  or  with  a  steady 
gaze. 

To  do  these  things  was  the  heritage,  with  modifi- 
cations, but  not  essentially  changed,  passed  on 
from  the  single  Catholic  Church  of  the  Middle 
Ages  to  the  many  Churches  of  modern  Christian- 
ity. It  is  now  presented  for  our  acceptance. 
In  this  last  chapter,  therefore,  I  desire  to  emphasize 
what  seem  to  me  to  be  the  conditions  which  we 


Conclusion  191 

must  fulfil  if  we  wish  to  discharge  the  stewardship 
offered  to  us. 

Christianity  has  always  been  a  movement:  the 
stewardship  of  faith  is  to  carry  on  the  movement. 
We  must  continue  the  same  process  of  changing 
theology  and  changing  institutional  life  which  is 
revealed  to  us  by  the  study  of  history.  To  all  sides 
of  the  problems  raised  by  the  recognition  of  this 
fact,  no  man  can  give  an  adequate  answer ;  but  no 
man  who  lives  in  any  degree  in  the  present,  and 
sees  the  events  which  are  changing  the  conditions 
of  human  life,  ought  to  fail  to  see  that  these  are 
facts  which  organized  Christianity  must  take  more 
seriously  than  it  seems  to  do  at  present.  These 
may  conveniently  be  treated  under  the  heads  of 
theology,  the  ministry  of  the  Church,  and  the 
extension  of  Christian  ethics. 

A  theologian  may  perhaps  be  forgiven  if  he 
begin  with  the  duty  of  the  churches  toward  theo- 
logy* even  though  he  would  be  the  last  to  claim 
that  this  is  the  most  important  point.  There  is  a 
general  consensus,  even  amongst  the  most  con- 
servative, that  "restatement"  is  imperatively 
called  for,  but  it  is  of  primary  importance  to  recog- 
nize that  what  the  churches  are  asked  to  produce 
is  not  a  restatement  of  traditional  theology  but  a 


192         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

restatement  of  religion  in  modern  language.  A 
more  or  less  ingenious  amendment  of  mediaeval 
theological  statement  will  satisfy  no  one,  for  the 
artificial  admixture  of  modern  thought  and  ancient 
language  produces  something  as  remote  from 
an  articulate  and  intelligent  theology  as  "pidgin" 
English  is  from  the  language  of  educated  English- 
men. 

In  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  attempted  to 
explain,  in  modern  language,  some  of  the  features 
of  religious  life  both  among  the  early  Christians 
and  in  our  own  generation;  but  no  one  can  at 
present  hope  adequately  to  cover  the  whole 
ground.  More  important  than  attempts  to  build 
without  sufficient  material  is  the  effort  to  realize 
some  of  the  conditions  of  modern  thought  which 
must  be  considered  if  we  wish  to  produce  a  state- 
ment of  religion  which  will  help  the  next  genera- 
tion. 

In  the  first  place  we  have  a  different  sense  of 
abstract  justice  from  that  which  existed  even  a 
century  ago.  This  cuts  at  the  root  of  many  theo- 
logical statements  which  presented  little  difficulty 
to  our  ancestors. 

For  instance,  the  theology  of  the  past  offered 
little  or  no  hope  for  the  salvation  of  an  unbaptized 
person,  however  good  a  life  he  may  have  led;  even 


Conclusion  193 

the  fate  of  unbaptized  infants  was  regarded  as 
doubtful.  At  present  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  one 
who  maintains  such  monstrous  propositions  will 
even  gain  a  hearing  from  the  general  public.  Yet 
that  is  not  because  the  old  view  misrepresented 
the  logical  results  of  the  traditional  theological 
system,  but  because  the  increased  sense  of  abstract 
justice  puts  such  teaching  out  of  court,  and  re- 
gards it  as  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  theory 
from  which  it  was  deduced. 

Or,  again,  the  traditional  presentation  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement  is  becoming  daily  less 
and  less  acceptable  to  our  generation  because  it 
clashes  with  our  sense  of  justice.  It  seems  to 
represent  the  suffering  of  Jesus  as  a  unique  in- 
stance of  the  redemptive  power  of  innocent  suffer- 
ing, to  depict  God  as  in  some  sense  standing 
outside  this  process,  accepting  it  as  an  offering  to 
himself,  and  in  some  way  changing  his  attitude 
to  the  guilty  in  consequence  of  it.1  If  I  am  not 
much  mistaken,  the  clash  between  this  teaching 
and  the  sense  of  justice  was  one  of  the  causes 
which  led  the  "Lux  Mundi"  school  of  theologians 

1  Theologians  have,  of  course,  from  the  time  of  Anselm,  felt  the 
difficulty  of  the  position,  but  they  have  never  wholly  succeeded 
in  meeting  it.  The  important  thing,  however,  is  that  the  non- 
theological  but  educated  public  is  now  aroused  to  a  consciousness 
of  the  problem. 

13 


194         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

in  Oxford  in  the  nineties  to  say  in  their  general 
teaching  so  much  about  the  Incarnation  and  so 
little  about  the  Atonement. 

Yet  here  again  the  policy  of  leaving  difficulties 
on  one  side  will  not  long  be  successful.  Behind 
the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  is  the  problem  of 
innocent  suffering  in  general.  No  view  of  life  is 
complete  which  does  not  recognize  that  progress  is 
conditional  on  suffering,  and  that  this  suffering 
is  effective  in  proportion  as  it  is  the  suffering  of 
the  innocent.1  Moreover,  we  are  obliged  to  go 
further  and  say  that  the  only  thinkable  belief 
is  not  that  God  stands  outside  the  world  and  wills 
it  to  endure  suffering,  but  that  he,  as  immanent  in 
it,  shares  in  its  travail,  which  he  wills  for  himself  as 
well  as  for  us.  The  modern  theologian  feels  that 
this  is  the  fundamental  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Atonement :  it  is  the  eternal  suffering  of  the  Logos 
which  redeems  and  raises  the  Universe.  Why 
suffering  should  in  this  way  be  essential  to  life  we  do 
not  know:  but  whereas  the  figure  of  the  suffering 
God  in  a  suffering  world  may  prove — I  think  will 
prove — to  be  irreconcilable  with  the  traditional  con- 
ception of  omnipotence,2  it  does  not  outrage  the 

1  Though  the  innocent  cannot  voluntarily  seek  it,  but  only 
benefit  the  world  by  accepting  the  cup  which  is  given  them  to 
drink  in  the  course  of  their  appointed  career. 

3  I  mean  that  instead  of  regarding  God  as  a  being  who  has 


Conclusion  195 

sense  of  justice.  More  and  more  men  accept  the 
suffering  of  the  innocent  as  one  of  the  facts  of 
life,  but  they  do  so  only  if  it  be  presented  to  them 
as  the  birth  pains  of  some  better  thing,  not  as  the 
torturing  punishment  inflicted  by  a  judge.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  like  that  of  the  Incar- 
nation of  the  Logos,  has  its  permanent  place  in 
human  thought,  but  the  churches  will  retain  the 
privilege  of  being  its  exponents  only  if  they  prove 
equal  to  the  task  of  beginning  its  explanation  with 
the  facts  of  living  experience,  and  place  the  suffer- 
ing of  Jesus  within  and  not  without  the  ever- 
widening  circle  of  suffering  yet  redeeming  and 
triumphant  life.  If  the  churches  prove  unequal 
to  their  task,  and  sacrifice  the  truth  of  experience 
to  the  tradition  of  expression,  the  world  will  pass 
them  by  and  listen  by  preference  to  men  and 
societies  who  are  more  alive  to  the  necessities  of 
the  present. 

It  will  also  be  necessary  to  accept  much  more 
definitely  the  fact  that  all  modern  scientific  study 
begins  with  the  observation  of  fact  and  not  with 
the  development  of  theory.     In  the  Middle  Ages 

unlimited  power  to  do  anything  in  an  arbitrary  and  miraculously 
unconditional  manner,  we  shall  regard  him  as  the  repository  of 
"all  the  power  that  there  is,"  and  look  on  him  as  "able  to  do  all 
things  which  can  be  done. "  But  I  think  that  some  Liberals  need 
to  remember  that  this  is  not  what  omnipotence  originally  meant. 


196        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

theory  came  first  and  facts  were  quoted  to  prove 
the  correctness  of  accepted  theory.  That  is  no 
doubt  a  branch  of  work  which  has  its  value,  but  we 
have  learnt  that  it  is  far  more  important  to  observe 
facts  and  to  modify  theories  in  accordance  with 
them. 

In  the  field  of  theology  this  was  done  by  William 
James,  who  was  a  pioneer  in  this  direction,  and 
though  there  may  be  some  doubt  as  to  whether  he 
applied  his  method  in  the  best  way,  there  can  be 
none  as  to  the  value  of  the  method  itself.  Unfor- 
tunately the  theologian,  especially  in  England,  is 
too  often  primarily  a  historian  rather  than  a  stu- 
dent of  living  religion,  and  I  can  certainly  make  no 
claim  to  be  an  exception,  but  I  would  suggest  that 
the  treatment  of  Christology  on  pp.  181  ft.  is  a 
conscious  attempt  to  adopt  the  application  of  the 
modern  method  of  beginning  with  the  facts  of 
observed  religion,  and  of  working  back  from  them 
to  the  appreciation  of  similar  facts  in  history. 

This  method  will  mean  that  in  the  future  theo- 
logians will  give  up  trying  to  compress  the  truth 
into  short  statements  and  claiming  them  as 
authoritative.  Theology  can  no  more  be  stated 
shortly  than  any  other  science,  and  no  statement 
has  any  authority  unless  it  can  be  shown  to  be  true. 
No  one  thinks  of  testing  the  correctness  of  a  great 


Conclusion  197 

chemist's  view  by  his  acceptance  of  a  short  state- 
ment, or  of  attaching  authority  to  his  opinion  apart 
from  evidence.  In  the  future  it  will  seem  equally 
absurd  to  ask  men  to  accept  or  reject  statements 
which  profess  to  give  short  categorical  solutions  to 
some  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  philosophy 
and  theology,  and  from  their  answers  to  pass 
judgment  alike  on  their  theological  and  religious 
standing.  Theological  statement  will  before  long 
be  accepted  exactly  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  evidence, 
just  as  is  the  case  with  any  other  science,  otherwise 
it  will  be  regarded  as  superstition.  Moreover,  it 
will  make  no  claim  to  special  sources  of  knowledge 
once  revealed  and  now  hidden,  for  whereas  the 
theological  systems  of  the  past  were  based  on  a 
triumphant  but  unfounded  belief  in  supernatural 
knowledge,  the  systems  of  tomorrow  will  be 
bounded,  like  those  of  other  sciences,  by  the 
securer  though  humbler  recognition  of  natural 
ignorance.  We  believe  that  we  can  see  that  life 
is  governed  by  purpose,  and  to  that  purpose  we 
endeavour  to  make  our  own  wills  subordinate; 
but  we  are  conscious  that  its  fullness,  its  origin,  and 
its  end  are  outside  the  scope  of  our  understanding. 
We  are  therefore  not  prepared  to  make  the  value  of 
religion,  which  is  our  present  possession,  depend- 
ent on  the  correctness  of  our  guesses  at  things 


198         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

outside  the  limitations  of  our  knowledge.  We 
cannot  wholly  explain  the  Universe,  and  we  are 
weary  of  attempts  to  cover  up  the  insufficiency  of 
the  intellect  by  a  superabundance  of  words.  We 
know  that  we  are  limited  in  our  powers  and  narrow 
in  our  vision,  but  we  seek  in  our  better  moments 
to  develop  that  element  in  our  personality  which 
binds  us  to  others  and  makes  us  work  for  the 
general  common  good  of  all,  even  to  the  sacrifice 
of  ourselves.  We  know  that  we  develop  this 
element,  partly  in  our  private  life  in  which  we 
stretch  out  our  hands  to  that  power  in  the  universe 
which  seems  to  be  to  us  what  we  would  fain  be  to 
our  children,  and  partly  in  the  corporate  life  in 
which  we  meet  together  with  others.  It  is  this 
side  of  life,  and  all  that  we  gain  from  it,  that  we 
mean  by  religion;  we  know  that  in  it  we  some- 
times seem  to  approach  more  nearly  than  in  any 
other  way  to  reality,  and  to  see  through  the  veil  of 
phenomena.  The  experience  of  it  is  the  basis  of 
religious  life,  and  membership  in  the  churches 
ought  to  depend  on  its  possession.  The  theologian 
endeavours  to  make  it  articulate  and  to  trace  its 
history,  but  to  do  so  is  a  progressive  science,  and 
the  churches  will  not  long  retain  the  respect  of  the 
educated  world  if  they  prefer  to  take  their  stand  on 
the  theology  of  an  age  which  has  passed  away. 


Conclusion  199 

It  is  this  attitude  to  theology  which  will  in  the 
end  decide  the  vexed  question  of  the  creeds. 
The  allegorical  and  symbolical  explanations  which 
proved  fatal  to  heathenism  (see  pp.  I29ff.)  are  being 
applied  far  too  much  to  the  creeds.  In  itself  this 
is  no  more  likely  to  be  successful  than  it  was  in 
heathenism,  and  the  ecclesiastical  theologian  fails 
to  notice  that  interpretation  is  not  the  battle- 
field on  which  the  question  of  the  creeds  is  going 
to  be  fought  out,  unless  indeed  it  is  to  become 
merely  a  squabble  between  the  few  survivors  from 
the  wreck  of  great  institutions.  What  men  feel  is 
that  if  the  Church  is  a  society  for  the  maintenance 
of  a  close  and  defined  system  of  theology  it  has 
no  message  for  them,  and  has  as  little  claim  to  be 
taken  seriously  as  a  society  of  chemists  which 
should  take  for  its  purpose  not  the  discovery  and 
propagation  of  chemical  truth,  but  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  scientific  theories  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  laity  cling  to  the  churches  because  they 
believe  that  they  are  not  intended  primarily  to 
perpetuate  theological  opinion,  but  to  develop 
and  organize  religious  life,  and  the  time  is  rapidly 
approaching  when  the  educated  classes  will  feel 
and  say  openly  that  it  is  as  absurd  to  tie  down 
theological  science — that  is,  the  intellectual  ex- 
pression of  religion  —  to  a  few  formularies  as  it 


200        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

would  be  to  impose  the  same  bondage  on  other 
sciences.  What  is  required  from  theology  is  that 
it  should  be  so  far  as  is  possible  true  and  logical. 
Argument,  not  tradition,  will  say  the  last  word. 
Part  of  the  heritage  from  the  Early  Church  is  that 
it  has  shown  the  possibility  of  an  intelligent  theo- 
logy which  shall  grow  and  develop  in  accordance 
with  the  increase  of  knowledge,  and  the  deepening 
of  perception.  The  men  of  today  are  essentially 
religious,  but  they  ask  also  for  an  intelligible  theo- 
logy. 

The  development  of  such  a  theology  is  being 
carried  on  at  present  in  all  the  civilized  countries  of 
the  world  by  men  who  are  devoting  their  lives  to 
this  object.  In  the  main  they  all  are  working  on 
the  same  general  lines,  though  there  are  startling 
differences  in  detail,  and  they  are,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, profoundly  religious  men.  They  have 
been  born  and  brought  up  in  the  various  churches 
of  Christendom,  and  they  desire  intensely  to  keep 
their  inheritance.  It  is  in  no  spirit  of  arrogant 
self-assertion,  but  in  the  faith  that  their  careers 
have  been  guided  by  a  higher  power,  which  has 
made  use  of  their  industry  and  scientific  training 
to  lead  the  world  to  some  deeper  knowledge  of  the 
truth,  that  they  grieve  over  the  reluctance  of  the 
churches  to  hear  their  message.     The  world  is 


Conclusion  201 

listening  to  them:  the  popular  lecture  room,  the 
public  press,  the  great  universities  are  theirs,  but  to 
many  of  them  it  seems  that  the  great  historic 
communities  to  which  they  belong  are  turning  a 
deaf  ear  to  messages  which  others  accept,  and  are 
refusing  the  offices  of  men  who  have  the  desire  and 
the  ability  to  serve  them  well.  "Lo!  we  turn  to 
the  Gentiles"  is  a  simple  phrase,  but  there  never 
yet  was  an  Israelite  who  uttered  it  without  yearn- 
ing in  his  heart  for  the  people  of  the  promise. 

The  sacramental  ministry  of  the  Church  remains 
in  the  churches  of  modern  Christianity,  though  it  is 
in  some  of  the  Protestant  communities  changed 
almost  out  of  recognition.  On  pp.  137  fL,  I  have 
emphasized  my  conviction  that  the  sacramental 
side  of  religious  life  is  permanent,  and  that  a  minis- 
try for  the  care  of  souls  is  an  essential  part  of 
organized  Christianity.  But  Christianity  cannot 
adequately  live  up  to  this  side  of  its  stewardship 
if  it  do  not  fulfil  two  requirements. 

The  first  is  easier  to  state  than  to  perform:  the 
education  of  ministers  in  Christian  churches  must 
be  reformed  so  that  candidates  for  the  ministry 
shall  be  trained  primarily  in  the  facts  of  spiritual 
life,  in  health  and  in  sickness,  and  only  secondarily 
in  the  history  of  the  religious  life  of  the  past. 


202         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

Only  those  who  are  actively  engaged  in  teaching 
understand  how  necessary  this  is,  and  how  many 
practical  difficulties  must  be  overcome. 

Equally  important,  more  controversial,  and  call- 
ing for  much  mutual  forbearance  is  the  second  re- 
quirement. Christianity  has  to  face  and  accept 
the  fact  that  it  is  no  longer  a  church  but  a  collec- 
tion of  churches.  It  is  impossible  to  undo  what 
has  been  done ;  not  only  has  Catholic  Christianity 
itself  divided  into  more  than  one  branch,  but  also 
there  is  alongside  of  it  a  whole  series  of  Protestant 
churches,  in  some  ways  more,  in  some  ways  less, 
efficient  than  the  older  societies,  with  a  spiritual 
life  as  deep  and  true  as  that  of  Catholics,  though 
otherwise  fostered  and  differently  expressed. 
Much  harm  has  been  done  in  this  connection  by 
the  use  of  the  word  schism.  Schism  is  a  meta- 
phorical expression  derived  primarily  from  tear- 
ing a  garment.  Now  undoubtedly  the  tearing  of 
garments  is  undesirable  under  all  circumstances ;  a 
torn  garment  is  an  injured  garment,  and  the  piece 
torn  out  is  a  piece  of  rag  and  not  a  garment.  But 
after  all  Christianity  is  not  a  garment — dead  and 
inorganic — but  a  living  organism.  The  appli- 
cation to  living  things  of  metaphors  drawn  from 
the  inorganic  world  is  sure  to  be  imperfect.  Much 
would   therefore   be   gained   if   Christians   would 


Conclusion  203 

remember  that  in  the  world  of  living  organisms, 
schism  or  scission  is  the  recognized  means  of 
perpetuating  life.  Cells  split  into  two,  in  the 
lowest  forms  of  natural  life,  without  effort  or  pain, 
but  in  the  higher  forms  the  process  of  splitting  off  a 
new  group  of  cells,  and  so  producing  a  new  living 
being,  is  often  attended  by  effort,  danger,  and  pain. 
Still,  we  do  not  therefore  look  on  it  as  evil.  Life, 
according  to  the  biologist,  depends  on  what  he 
calls  scission,  and  ordinary  people  call  birth. 
Civilized  life,  according  to  the  sociologist,  de- 
pends on  the  recognition  and  sustenance  of  new 
lives,  not  in  getting  rid  of  them,  either  by  exter- 
mination, or  by  an  unthinkable  process  of  re- 
absorption.  Surely  it  would  be  better  if  we  were 
to  change  the  implications  of  the  metaphor,  and 
see  that  the  schism  which  led  to  the  creation  of  the 
various  Protestant  churches  is  the  birth  of  new 
organisms,  and  that  the  task  of  the  future  is  not 
reunion,  but  recognition  and  co-operation.  Each 
of  us  belongs  to  his  church  as  he  does  to  his  own 
family;  we  would  not  change  even  if  we  could,  but 
exclusiveness  and  pride  is  as  unpleasant  and  fool- 
ish in  a  church  as  it  is  in  a  family. 

It  is  of  course  true  that  this  change  of  attitude 
will  call  for  the  abandonment  of  many  long-cher- 
ished illusions,  especially  from  churches  with  the 


204        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

Catholic  tradition  of  episcopacy.  It  is  essential 
that  the  theory  of  a  divinely  established  episcopal 
order  should  be  frankly  abandoned,  except  in  the 
sense  that  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of 
God.  "Orders"  are  necessary  to  "order,"  and 
order  is  necessary  to  life,  but  neither  "orders" 
nor  "order "  is  the  source  of  life.  They  come  from 
it,  and  do  not  impart  it.  Ordination  ought  to  be 
the  recognition  of  "gifts" — charismata — and  of 
power,  but  it  cannot  confer  them  when  they  are 
absent.  It  is  the  practice  in  many  circles  to  dis- 
cuss this  question  on  the  basis  of  historical  evi- 
dence and  biblical  or  patristic  quotations :  I  do  not 
propose  to  follow  this  method  because  it  is  not 
really  germane  to  the  question.  The  point  at 
issue  is  whether  episcopally  ordained  clergy  have 
spiritual  powers  other  than  those  possessed  by  the 
ministers  of  Protestant  churches  or  by  laity  who 
have  never  been  ordained  at  all,  not  what  past 
generations  may  have  thought  about  the  matter. 
I  believe  that  the  modern  man  has  as  a  rule  made 
up  his  mind  by  observation  that  on  the  one  hand 
there  are  many  non-episcopal  clergy  who  constantly 
further  the  cause  of  Christianity  by  word  and  deed, 
and  really  are  pastors  of  the  flock  and  physicians 
to  the  sick,  while  on  the  other  there  are  some 
episcopal  clergy  who,  in  spite  of  their  ordination, 


Conclusion  205 

are  obviously  lacking  in  these  gifts.  Therefore 
he  concludes  that  ordination  cannot  confer  gifts, 
and  though  he  values  it  he  does  so  only  as  the 
official  sanction,  necessary  to  all  order  and  dis- 
cipline, to  certain  gifted  persons  to  exercise  a 
ministry  which,  since  it  has  been  given  them  from 
above,  ecclesiastical  authority  can  neither  give  nor 
take  away,  but  only  recognize. 

Nevertheless,  although  the  Catholic,  whether 
Greek,  Roman  or  Anglican,  has  much  to  concede 
to  the  Protestant  churches  before  co-operation  can 
really  be  effective,  the  Protestant  churches  have 
also  something  to  learn  from  the  Catholic.  It  is 
true  that  the  "gifts"  of  the  true  minister  of  the 
Church — the  pastoral  instinct,  the  power  of  sym- 
pathizing with  and  helping  the  outcast,  and  of 
intelligible  preaching  or  teaching — are  not  con- 
veyed by  ordination,  but  a  church  is  something 
more  than  the  sum  of  its  members,  and  the  office 
of  being  its  appointed  agent  is  in  itself  a  gift  which 
is  really  conveyed  by  the  Church  and  carries  with 
it  power  and  authority.  The  Catholic  has  over- 
estimated this  truth,  and  has  often  confused  it 
with  the  individual  gifts  of  the  spirit,  but  the 
Protestant  has  often  underestimated  or  ignored 
it.  At  the  same  time  this  does  not  alter  the  fact 
that  the  main  issue  is  the  power  of  ordination  to 


206         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

convey  "gifts,"  and  that  here  the  Protestant  is 
right  and  the  Catholic  is  wrong. 

More  obscure,  more  difficult,  and  yet,  if  I  be  not 
greatly  mistaken,  even  more  important  than  the 
intellectual  problems  of  theology,  or  the  partly 
intellectual,  partly  practical,  problems  of  the  min- 
istry, is  the  question  of  ethics. 

The  ethical  problem  of  the  Church  in  the 
Roman  Empire  was  to  raise  the  standard  of 
individual  life,  and  it  succeeded  in  doing  so.  No 
one  would  maintain  that  the  necessity  of  raising 
the  standard  of  individual  life  is  now  past,  but 
this  ought  not  to  obscure  the  fact  that  at  present 
the  world  is  looking  rather  for  something  to  raise 
the  standard  of  social  and  national  life. 

It  is  a  platitude  to  say  that  we  are  living  in  a 
period  of  rapid  social  change;  but  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  it  is  equally  well  recognized  that 
this  rapid  social  change  is  bringing  with  it  the 
necessity  for  a  widening  of  ethical  theory  to  cover 
the  new  complexities  of  life. 

The  facts  as  they  appear  to  the  ordinary  ob- 
server are  that  modern  commercial  methods  have 
produced  at  one  end  of  the  social  scale  enormous 
wealth,  and  a  power  for  good  and  evil  concentrated 
in  the  hands  of  a  few  men  such  as  no  previous 


Conclusion  207 

epoch  has  known.  But  at  the  other  end  of  the 
scale  even  if  distress  and  poverty  have  not  actually 
increased,  the  perception  of  them  has  become 
more  acute  and  has  been  greatly  stimulated  by  the 
wider  outlook  and  enlarged  powers  of  imagination 
conferred  by  the  extension  of  education,  so  that 
general  discontent  is  rapidly  increasing.  Pro- 
bably a  majority  of  men  would  welcome  a  radical 
change,  but  is  held  back  by  not  unreasonable  fear 
lest  its  consequences  should  be  worse  than  existing 
evils. 

The  cause  of  the  trouble  is  partly  economic,  but 
partly  ethical.  The  ruthlessness  of  some  commer- 
cial methods  seems  to  be  quite  as  opposed  to  a  high 
ethical  standard  as  any  caused  by  military  opera- 
tions, and  it  is  felt  that  new  ethical  standards 
must  be  introduced  into  public  life  if  it  is  to  be 
saved  from  disaster.  Unfortunately  to  many, 
especially  in  the  working-classes,  it  appears  that 
the  organized  churches  of  Christendom  are  con- 
tent with  preaching  submission  to  the  poor  and 
philanthropy  to  the  rich,  emphasizing  the  virtue  of 
spending  money  properly  instead  of  rather  calling 
attention  to  the  duty  of  not  earning  it  dubiously. 
The  quarrel  of  the  working-classes  with  the 
churches  is  therefore  ethical  rather  than  theologi- 
cal.     For   that  reason  more  and  more  of   them 


208         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

are  turning  towards  the  teaching  of  that  whole 
complex x  of  social  and  ethical  propaganda  of  which 
socialism  is  the  most  prominent. 

Whether  socialism  as  an  economic  system  be 
right  or  wrong  I  do  not  know ;  but  it  is  plain  that 
the  reason  why  it  appeals  to  so  many  people  is  not 
that  they  understand  economic  science,  but  that 
they  think  that  they  have  found  in  it  an  organi- 
zation which  vigorously  protests  against  the  evils 
of  the  present  day  (whereas  the  churches  only  offer 
palliatives),  and  holds  up  before  men's  eyes  an 
ideal  of  life,  and  a  vision  of  society  raised  to  a 
higher  plane.  It  is  asking  men  to  believe  in  the 
coming  of  a  New  Age  which  will  be  enjoyed  by  a 
better  human  nature,  and  to  prepare  themselves 
for  it. 

The  parallelism  between  the  present  position  of 
socialism,  with  its  allied  methods  of  thought, 
and  early  Christianity  is  extraordinary  and  very 
disquieting.  In  both  cases  you  have  a  body  of 
men  asserting  in  a  perhaps  somewhat  irritating 
manner  their  aloofness  from  the  established  order 

1  I  mean  the  whole  group  of  -isms  and  anti-s  which  attract 
those  who  are  discontented  with  things  as  they  are.  The  histor- 
ian of  the  future  will  quite  possibly  compare  them  with  the  "God- 
fearers"  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  point  out  that  although  they 
lacked  the  elements  of  stability  and  permanence  they  were  the 
raw  material  out  of  which  new  systems  of  greater  strength  were 
built  up. 


Conclusion  209 

of  society;  in  both  cases  you  have  a  body  of  men 
prophesying  that  society  is  doomed  to  come  down 
with  a  crash  and  that  a  New  Age  is  at  hand  which 
they  and  the  outcasts  of  the  existing  system  will 
inherit;  in  both  cases  you  find  this  body  of  men 
attacked  as  irreligious,  unpatriotic,  and  deluded. 
That  is  the  parallelism.  How  much  further  will  it 
go?  The  future  is  unknown  to  us,  but  we  can 
sometimes  use  the  past  as  a  mirror  in  which  to 
study  its  advance. 

In  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire  the  crash  did 
come  and  a  new  age  did  dawn,  but  it  was  not  the 
sort  of  new  age  which  the  Christians  had  foreseen. 
It  was  instead  the  Dark  Ages ;  and  this  was  partly 
because  there  was  an  element  of  truth  in  the 
accusations  brought  against  the  Christians,  that 
they  were  neglecting  things  essential  to  the  wel- 
fare of  organized  society,  and  partly  because  the 
intellectual  and  cultured  classes  of  that  day  lacked 
the  faith  and  courage  to  lead  the  way  to  a  new 
world,  but  kept  turning  regretful  backward  glances 
to  the  old  order  which  was  passing  away.  The 
New  Age  was  dark  because  it  lacked  the  prestige, 
power,  and  tradition  of  government  which  the 
richer  classes  of  the  Empire  had  possessed,  and  its 
leadership  passed  to  the  Christian  Church  because, 
although  it  lacked  these  things,  it  had  a  clearer 

X4 


210        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

vision  of  a  higher  life,  and  the  faith  to  follow  its 
guidance  through  the  darkness. 

Moreover,  recent  events  in  Europe  have  shown 
how  important  it  is  to  extend  the  influence  of 
Christian  ethics  to  international  life,  and  to  recover 
the  concept — well  known  to  the  Church  of  the 
Middle  Ages — of  a  community  of  life  on  its  highest 
plane  binding  together  men  of  different  blood, 
and  providing  the  nations  with  a  "common  supe- 
rior*'  to  whom  they  could  yield  obedience  without 
degradation,  and  submit  their  disputes  without 
dishonour.  Christianity  was  once  above  nation- 
ality; and  the  present  evils  are  largely  due  to  a 
perverted  nationalism  which  leads  men  to  act  and 
think  as  though  it  were  the  highest  possible  form  of 
life,  and  as  though  Christian  ethics  could  not 
apply  to  it. 

When  the  men  of  the  last  century  come  to  stand 
before  the  bar  of  history  two  classes  will  be  especi- 
ally prominent.  On  the  one  hand  there  will  be 
the  men  of  science,  who  have  extended  the  bound- 
aries of  knowledge  with  an  unequalled  rapidity. 
They  have  often  rejected  the  name  of  Christian 
because  they  have  been  unable  to  accept  the 
traditional  Weltanschauung  of  the  past ;  but  they 
have  followed  closely  the  ideal  of  Christian  ethics. 
As  a  class  they  have  been  marked  by  a  passion  for 


Conclusion  211 

truth,  and  by  willingness  to  help  even  at  their  own 
expense  all  animated  by  the  same  desire.  They 
have  constantly  sacrificed  themselves  to  the  good 
of  others,  and  have  pursued  controversy  to  estab- 
lish fact  rather  than  to  secure  personal  triumph. 
On  the  other  hand  there  will  be  the  class  of  those 
who  have  guided  the  international  and  national 
politics  of  Europe.  With  few  exceptions  they  have 
kept  the  name  of  Christian,  but  their  conduct  has 
been  a  cynical  denial  of  Christian  ethics.  Their 
skill  has  been  to  use  language  which  should  deceive 
though  it  did  not  break  the  formal  limits  of  truth. 
They  have  obtained  power  for  themselves  at  the 
expense  of  others,  and  they  have  abused  the 
opportunities  of  controversy  to  obscure  the  real 
issues.  They  have  held  up  opponents  to  hatred 
and  contempt,  as  well  in  national  as  in  inter- 
national life,  and  in  the  end  they  have  subjected  to 
the  horrors  of  war  the  countries  which  they  pro- 
fessed to  guide.  Can  it  be  doubted  what  the 
verdict  of  history  will  be  on  these  two  classes? 
and  is  it  not  the  tragedy  of  Christian  history 
that  the  organized  churches  have  allowed  Welt- 
anschauung to  count  for  more  than  ethics? 

The  one  thing  which  seems  certain  today  is 
that  society  as  we  have  known  it  is  drawing  to  an 
end.     Our  children  will  inherit  a  New  Age;  will  it 


212         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

be  an  age  of  light  or  of  darkness?  If  it  is  to  be 
an  age  of  light  there  will  be  required  from  its 
spiritual  rulers  the  establishment  of  some  common 
superior  of  nations  to  safeguard  the  development 
and  legitimate  expansion  of  each  against  the 
oppression  or  envy  of  any,  and  a  new  extension  of 
Christian  ethics  to  raise  the  standard  of  social  and 
national  life.  Will  the  churches  give  this?  Can 
anyone  else?  It  is  the  doubt  expressed  in  these 
questions  which  brings  to  the  study  of  history  at 
the  present  moment  so  deep  a  sense  of  the  shadow 
of  evil  days  to  come,  and  lays  on  us  the  respon- 
sibility of  warning  those  who  at  present  enjoy  the 
heritage  of  Christianity  how  great  is  the  task 
before  them,  and  how  serious  is  the  necessity  for 
faith  in  the  guidance  of  life,  for  the  love  of  truth 
in  study,  and  for  courage  in  utterance  to  the 
people. 


APPENDIX 

THE  EARLY  CHRISTIAN  TREATMENT  OF 
SIN  AFTER   BAPTISM1 

The  primitive  view  of  Gentile  Christianity  was  that 
those  who  were  baptized  were  free  from  sin.  They 
had  been  born  again  into  a  state  of  sinlessness,2  and  it 
was  their  duty  to  see  that  they  never  relapsed  again 
into  the  dangerous  state  which  they  had  left;  if  they 
should  fail  in  this  duty,  it  was  questionable  whether 
they  had  any  further  chance  of  salvation. 

The  best-known  statement  of  this  doctrine  is  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  apparently  written  at  a  time 
when  the  doctrine  had  become  a  matter  of  dispute,  and 
needed  clear  enunciation.  It  is  especially  plain  in  two 
passages:  (a)  in  Hebrews  vi.,  4-8,  "For  as  touching 
those  who  were  once  enlightened,  and  tasted  of  the 
heavenly  gift,  and  were  made  partakers  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  and  tasted  the  good  Word  of  God,  and  the 
Powers  of  the  Age  to  come,  and  then  fell  away,  it  is 
impossible  to  renew  them  again  unto  repentance;" 
(b)  in  Hebrews  x.,  26,  "  For  if  we  sin  wilfully  after  that 
we  have  received  the  knowledge  of  the  truth,  there 
remaineth  no  more  a  sacrifice  for  sins,  but  a  certain 

1  This  discussion,  with  a  few  changes,  was  originally  pub- 
lished in  the  Expositor. 

3  Sinlessness  is  a  somewhat  ambiguous  term;  it  is  here  used  as 
the  equivalent  of  posse  non  peccare,  not  of  non  posse  peccare. 

213 


214         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

fearful  expectation  of  judgment,  and  a  fierceness  of 
fire  which  shall  devour  the  adversaries. " 

These  passages  clearly  imply  the  normal  sinlessness 
of  Christians,  and  exclude  the  possibility  of  forgive- 
ness for  wilful  sin  after  baptism.  Nor  is  there  any 
reason  for  rejecting  the  unanimous  tradition  of  early 
Christian  exegesis  which  explains  "enlightened" 
(9G)Ttcj0£VTac;)  in  vi.,  4,  as  a  reference  to  baptism, 
especially  when  it  is  remembered  that  Justin  Martyr1 
mentions  that  9(0x1^6  q  was  the  technical  term  for 
baptism. 

To  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  then, 
wilful  sin  after  baptism  was  regarded  as  unforgivable. 

The  same  point  of  view  was  that  of  St.  Paul,  but 
in  his  Epistles  the  question  is  not  yet  a  matter  of 
controversy,  and  is  only  implied  or  mentioned  in 
passing. 

For  instance,  if  we  read  Romans  vi.  without  the 
prejudice  which  comes  from  our  knowledge  of  history 
and  experience  of  life,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  St. 
Paul  regarded  the  condition  of  the  normal  Christian 
as  one  of  sinlessness.  "Reckon  ye  also  yourselves  to 
be  dead  unto  sin  .  .  .  being  made  free  from  sin  ye 
became  servants  of  righteousness, "  etc.,  leading  up  to 
the  final  conclusion  that  (viii.,  1)  "there  is  now  no 
condemnation  for  those  that  are  in  Christ  Jesus," 
because  they  have  been  freed  from  sin.  That  this  is 
St.  Paul's  position  is  obscured  too  often  by  a  wrong 
interpretation  of  vii.,  24, 2  which  really  describes  the 

1  Justin,  1  Apol.,  lxi. 

2  This  verse  and  those  immediately  preceding  seem  to  me  to  be 
a  piece  of  the  spiritual  autobiography  of  St.  Paul,  and  refer  to  the 
time  before  his  conversion.     The  main  difficulty  is  that  the  writer 


Sin  after  Baptism  215 

condition  of  an  unregenerate  but  distressed  soul,  fight- 
ing against  sin,  until  at  last  it  cries  out  in  a  rhetorical 
question,  "Who  shall  deliver  me  from  this  body  of 
death?" — to  which  St.  Paul  answers,  "Thanks  be  to 
God!  through  Jesus  Christ."  This  exegesis  makes 
sense,  is  that  of  the  earliest  commentators,  and  agrees 
with  early  Christian  thought ;  whereas  the  view  which 
explains  it  as  referring  to  regenerate  experience,  intro- 
duces confusion  into  the  whole  argument,  though 
agreeable  to  later  theological  systems. 

Moreover,  just  as  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
the  attainment  of  this  sinless  condition  is  connected 
with  baptism,  so  also  in  Romans  the  introduction  to 
the  description  of  the  breach  between  Christians  and 
sin  is:  "We  who  were  baptized  into  Christ  Jesus  were 
baptized  into  his  death."     (Rom.  vi.,  3.) 

Similarly,  if  we  turn  to  1  John,  we  find  sinlessness 
regarded  as  the  normal  characteristic  of  Christians, 
though  the  writer  is  largely  occupied  with  the  fact  that 
there  are  in  practice  many  exceptions  to  this  normal 
type.  "Whosoever  abideth  in  him  sinneth  not" 
(iii.,  6);  and  "Whosoever  is  begotten  of  God  doeth  no 
sin"  (iii.,  8,  v.,  18)  represent  the  Johannine  view  of 
what  Christian  life  might  be  and  ought  to  be. 

The  historical  reason  why  the  Christians  thus  re- 
garded themselves  as  sinless  was  that  sinlessness  in 
the  literature  of  the  Jews,  and  especially  in  the  Apoca- 
lyptic writings,  was  a  necessary  characteristic  of  the 
Messianic   kingdom,    and   the   Christians   were    (no 

makes  a  large  use  of  the  historic  present,  and  that  in  v.  25  the 
words  x^Pts  •  •  •  Kvplov  rjfjLQp  are  a  parenthesis,  anticipating  the 
fact  of  redemption,  while  the  rest  of  the  verse  refers  still  to 
unregenerate  experience. 


216        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

doubt  to  some  extent  in  a  proleptic  sense)  members  of 
that  kingdom.  For  instance,  in  the  Testament  of  Levi 
(c.  18)  we  are  told  of  the  Messiah,  "In  his  priesthood 
shall  sin  come  to  an  end,  and  the  lawless  shall  cease  to 
do  evil  .  .  .  and  he  shall  give  to  the  saints  to  eat 
from  the  tree  of  life,  and  the  spirit  of  holiness  shall  be 
on  them."  Or  again  in  Jubilees,  v.,  12,  "And  he 
made  for  all  his  works  a  new  and  righteous  nature,  so 
that  they  should  not  sin  in  their  whole  nature  for 
ever,  but  should  all  be  righteous  each  in  his  kind 
alway."1 

It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  sinlessness  was  ex- 
pected to  be  a  characteristic  of  the  Messianic  kingdom 
"in  the  last  days."  "Sinlessness"  is  the  negative 
method  of  stating  this  characteristic,  just  as  "right- 
eousness" is  the  positive  method,  and  it  may  be 
suggested  that  an  attempt  to  appreciate  this  fact  is 
far  more  likely  to  be  fruitful  in  explaining  the  meaning 
of  BtxatoauvY)  in  the  Pauline  Epistles  than  somewhat 
academic  and  barren  discussions  as  to  the  "forensic" 
or  other  character  of  the  word.  For  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  to  St.  Paul  it  was  already  the  "  last  days," 
and  that  he  regarded  Christians  as  the  "saints" 
who  were  to  be  members  of  the  Messianic  kingdom. 
Thus,  however  strange  it  may  be  to  us,  in  the  light  of 
eighteen  hundred  years  of  Christian  experience,  which 
has  shown  that  Christians  are  no  more  sinless  than 
other  people,  in  the  first  generation,  for  those  who 
believed  that  the  Messiah  was  coming  within  the 
limits  of  their  own  life,  and  that  they  were  the  mem- 

1  These  passages,  with  others  of  the  same  type,  from  IV.  Ezra, 
the  Apocalypse  of  Baruch,  the  Apocalypse  of  Moses,  etc.,  are 
quoted  by  H.  Windisch,  Taufe  und  Siinde  im  dltesten  Chrutentum 
bis  auj  Origenes. 


Sin  after  Baptism  217 

bers  of  his  kingdom,  it  was  perfectly  natural  to  think 
that  they  were  sinless  and  could  and  ought  to  remain 
so. 

The  psychological  basis  of  the  doctrine,  which  ex- 
plains why  the  Greek  world  could  so  easily  assimilate 
this  view,  is  rather  more  complicated.  It  turns 
chiefly  on  the  fact  that  until  quite  recently,  at  least 
in  popular  thought,  the  word  "sin "  covered  more  than 
one  idea.  The  best  way  of  making  plain  the  impor- 
tance of  this  point  for  the  present  subject  is  by  a 
reference  to  Professor  W.  James's  Varieties  of  Relig- 
ious Experience.  It  will  be  remembered  that  he 
divides  men  roughly  into  two  classes. 

In  the  first  place  there  are  those  who  are  throughout 
their  lives  fairly  well  contented  with  the  world  and 
with  themselves.  They  know  that  neither  they  nor 
the  world  are  perfect,  and  that  there  is  an  unpleasant 
background  of  evil  to  life  in  which  pain,  sorrow,  and 
sin  are  the  prominent  features.  Yet  on  the  whole 
they  are  conscious  that  they  are  doing  their  best,  and 
however  much  they  may  state  on  official  occasions 
that  they  are  miserable  sinners,  they  feel  in  their 
hearts  that  in  them  there  is  much  health  (instead  of 
none,  as  their  lips  state);  and  even  when  things  go 
most  obviously  wrong  they  are  constitutionally  unable 
to  face  the  fact,  and  prefer  to  believe  that  somehow 
"All's  right  with  the  world."  These  are  the  "once- 
born" — probably  much  the  greatest  number  of  people 
belong  to  their  ranks.  To  such  persons  sin  is — so  far 
as  their  experience  goes,  apart  from  doctrines  which 
they  take  on  trust  from  others — either  the  act  of  con- 
sciously doing  wrong,  or  the  general  imperfection  of 
human  nature.  The  two  things  are,  of  course,  quite 
distinct,  but  are  commonly  confused.    The  result  of 


218         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

this  confusion  is  that  a  not  too  intellectual  member  of 
this  class  can  usually  be  found  ready  to  state  (i)  that 
he  is  a  miserable  sinner — by  which  he  means  that  he 
often  makes  mistakes  and  is  generally  imperfect;  (2) 
that  he  has  rarely  if  ever  consciously  seen  right  and 
deliberately  done  wrong.  Such  statements  are  only 
intelligible  when  one  remembers  that  the  history  of 
doctrine  is  the  triumph  of  words  over  thought,  and 
that  the  word  "sin"  is  used  in  a  double  signification — 
sometimes  it  means  human  imperfection  and  falli- 
bility, sometimes  it  means  a  deliberate  choice  of  evil 
rather  than  good. 

Over  against  this  class — the  "  once-born  " — stands 
quite  another  type.  These  are  they  who  have  come  to 
appreciate  the  background  of  sorrow  in  life  more 
clearly  than  the  foreground  of  happiness.  The  im- 
perfection of  themselves  and  of  the  world  is  a  reality 
which  they  feel  in  their  hearts,  rather  than  merely 
acquiesce  in  with  their  intellects.  Those  who  have 
not  passed  through  such  an  experience  can  only  judge 
of  it  from  the  statements  of  those  who  have  done  so, 
and  have  described  their  feelings  in  books,  such  as, 
for  instance,  The  Pilgrim's  Progress.  Sometimes  this 
outlook  on  life  passes  away  gradually;  sometimes  it 
remains  throughout  life,  resulting  in  permanent  un- 
happiness ;  sometimes  it  degenerates  into  insanity ;  but 
sometimes  the  sufferer  (for  so  he  can  only  be  described) 
wins  through  to  a  higher  plane  of  thought,  in  which — 
usually  in  some  form  of  religion — he  finds  a  higher 
unifying  principle.  Such  men  are  the  " twice-born" 
of  Professor  James's  book,  and  probably  they  have  a 
truer  and  saner  outlook  on  life  than  the  "healthy- 
minded  once-born." 

Three  further  points  are  important  for  the  present 


Sin  after  Baptism  219 


purpose.  I.  The  change  from  unhappiness  to  con- 
tentment often  comes  to  the  " twice-born"  with  great 
suddenness,  and  in  connection  with  some  striking  in- 
cident or  some  outward  phenomenon.  2.  Whereas  the 
"  twice-born  "  are  probably  a  small  minority  of  man- 
kind at  any  time,  the  converts  to  a  new  religion,  or  to  a 
new  religious  movement,  belong  almost  exclusively  to 
that  class.  The  "  once-born  "  are  contented,  they  are 
those  who  "need  no  repentance";  but  those  who  are 
suffering  seek  and  find  help  in  religious  movements  and 
in  spiritual  "revivals."  3.  There  is  a  universal  ten- 
dency on  the  part  of  the  "  twice-born  "  to  speak  of  their 
consciousness  of  imperfection  and  of  the  dark  side  of 
life  as  a  "consciousness  of  sin,"  and  of  their  release 
from  their  sufferings  as  "forgiveness,"  or  "getting 
rid  of  sin, "  or  some  similar  expression.  Whether  this 
is  the  best  formula  or  not  is  not  important  for  the 
present  purpose,  but  it  is  at  least  certain  that  the 
"twice-born"  mean  by  it  something  which  is  outside 
the  experience  of  the  "once-born,"  and  the  result  is 
that  when,  as  is  always  the  case  with  a  religious  move- 
ment which  survives  and  becomes  an  organized 
church,  the  majority  of  the  members  are  no  longer 
"twice-born,"  but  "once-born,"  "consciousness  of 
sin"  and  "forgiveness  of  sin"  become  merely  theologi- 
cal formulae  instead  of  a  living  experience,  or  in  the 
alternative  there  is  a  disastrous  attempt  to  force  the 
experience  of  "once-born"  persons  into  the  mould  of 
the  other  type. 

In  the  first  century  there  was,  as  there  is  now,  an 
unusual  number  of  people  who  were  not,  in  Professor 
James's  phrase,  "healthy-minded,"  and  the  result 
was,  then  as  now,  a  period  of  great  religious  move- 
ment.    Of  this  religious  movement  Christianity  was 


220        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

a  part,  and  the  first  Christians  were  probably  all 
"twice-born.'*  It  was  therefore  perfectly  natural 
that  they  should  look  on  themselves  as  set  free  from 
sin,  as  having  become  sinless,  and  should  express  this 
personal  experience  in  language  borrowed  from  Jewish 
Messianic  thought.  Moreover  they  had  found  peace 
in  their  acceptance  of  Christianity,  which  began  with 
baptism ;  it  is  therefore  intelligible  that  they  had  a  real 
experiential  reason  for  connecting  the  attainment  of 
freedom  from  sin  with  baptism, x  and  for  accepting  the 
dogmatic  system  which  ascribed  sinlessness  to  the 
followers  of  the  Messiah  and  regarded  baptism  as  the 
means  of  initiation  into  his  kingdom. 

Nevertheless  experience  of  life  soon  showed  that 
the  Christian  after  all  was  frequently  not  sinless — in 
whatever  sense  the  word  sin  be  taken.  Thus  the 
problem  arose,  what  was  to  be  done  in  the  case  of  a 
Christian  who  relapsed  into  sin? 

The  most  obvious  suggestion  was  to  repeat  the 
baptism  which  had  originally  been  the  cause  of  sinless- 
ness. The  polemic  directed  against  this  suggestion  in 
the  passage  quoted  above  from  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  is  a  sufficient  proof  that  there  was  a  party 
which  made  this  suggestion,  and  that  it  did  not  find 
favour  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  ultimately  gained  the 
day;  but  the  most  important  example  which  we  have 
is  the  famous  heretic  Marcion.     According  to  Epi- 

1  It  is  unnecessary  here  to  enlarge  on  the  fact  that  this  train  of 
thought  was  facilitated  by  the  general  belief  in  the  first  century 
that  spiritual — and  indeed  material — results  could  be  obtained 
by  the  use  of  "names"  in  invocations,  and  by  the  widespread 
opinion  that  water  was  a  life-giving  substance  in  more  than  the 
physical  sense,  or  at  least  that  it  could  become  so  under  correct 
circumstances. 


Sin  after  Baptism  221 

phanius1  the  Marcionites  admitted  repeated  baptism 
in  the  case  of  sin,  and  he  unkindly  adds  that  Marcion 
himself  had  been  obliged  to  make  use  of  this  privilege. 
It  appears  that  this  arrangement  was  defended  by  a 
reference  to  Luke  xii.,  50,  "I  have  a  baptism  to  be 
baptized  with,"  which  was  taken  to  imply  a  second 
baptism,  as  Christ,  when  he  spoke  these  words,  had 
already  been  baptized  by  John  the  Baptist.  It  would, 
however,  seem  from  the  same  passage  in  Epiphanius 
that  this  repetition  of  baptism  was  limited  to  three 
times. 

Probably  this  suggestion  of  rebaptism  was  the 
earliest,  as  it  is  the  simplest,  method  of  dealing  with 
the  question;  but  it  was  met  with  a  resolute  opposi- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  Church,  and,  except  for  the 
references  to  Marcion,  the  only  traces  which  remain  of 
it  are  the  polemical  passages  in  Hebrews,  and  the 
emphasis  laid  on  the  one  baptism  in  Ephesians  iv.,  5, 
and  perpetuated — though  with  a  probably  different 
meaning — in  the  Nicene  Creed. 

It  is  worth  asking  why  this  natural  suggestion  of 
repeated  baptism  was  so  generally  rejected.  Pro- 
bably because  it  did  not  really  correspond  to  psycho- 
logical fact  in  the  way  in  which  the  original  baptism 
did.  As  was  shown  above,  the  fact  which  gave  bap- 
tism its  importance  was  that  it  so  often  coincided  with 
the  turning-point  in  the  experience  of  the  "twice- 
born."  The  first  Christians  had  therefore  a  very 
specious  argument  from  experience  at  their  disposal 
when  they  regarded  it  as  the  cause  of  the  change  in 

1  Adv.  Haer.,  I.  xlii.  Bairrurdeh  6  Kvpios  \nrb  row  *\u6.vvov 
e\eye  tois  /xadrjTais  B&TTTHTfjui  exw  PairTisdijvai,  outw  rb  Si86vai  ir\eiu) 
^airrisfJiaTa  £8oyfidTi<Tev. 


222        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

their  lives,  and  inasmuch  as  this  change  was  held  to  be 
the  passing  from  a  state  of  sin  to  a  state  of  righteous- 
ness, it  was  easy  to  identify  baptism  and  the  forgive- 
ness of  sins. 

But  though  one  may  use  the  same  word — sin — to 
describe  both  evil  deeds  and  the  state  of  unhappiness 
of  the  " twice-born"  before  they  find  peace,  it  is  quite 
certain  that  this  is  a  confusion  of  thought,  and  it  is 
similarly  certain  that  the  sin  forgiven,  or  got  rid  of, 
by  the  first  baptism  was  as  a  rule  sin  in  the  latter 
sense,  while  the  sin  which  gave  rise  to  the  problem  of 
sin  after  baptism  was  sin  in  the  former  sense. 

There  was  therefore  a  real  psychological  and  ex- 
periential difference  between  the  two  cases.  It  was  a 
confusion  of  thought  which  led  men  to  argue  that  what 
baptism  had  done  once  it  can  do  again;  and  although 
the  Catholic  was  quite  as  confused  intellectually  on 
this  point  as  was  the  heretic,  his  instinct — based  on 
experience,  not  on  logic — was  more  correct,  and  made 
him  distinguish  the  "forgiveness  of  sins"  obtained  in 
baptism  as  something  which  could  not  be  given  twice 
— at  least  not  by  the  same  means. 

Still,  the  rejection  of  rebaptism  was  no  solution  of 
the  practical  problem.  Perhaps  the  earliest  of  the 
other  attempts  of  which  we  have  clear  evidence  is 
presented  by  the  famous  verse  in  I  John  v.,  16/.,  "If 
any  man  see  his  brother  sinning  sin1  not  unto  death, 
he  shall  ask,  and  he  {i.e.,  the  Son  of  God)  will  give  him 
life  for  them  that  sin  not  unto  death :  there  is  sin  unto 
death,  not  concerning  this  do  I  say  that  he  should 

1  The  R.V.  puts  this  translation  of  a/xaprla  into  the  margin, 
and  a  sin  into  the  text;  but  it  is  difficult,  to  see  any  valid  reason 
for  doing  so. 


Sin  after  Baptism  223 

make  request.    All  unrighteousness  is  sin,  and  there  is 
sin  not  unto  death. " 

The  doctrine  implied  here  is  that  there  is  a  qualita- 
tive distinction  between  different  kinds  of  sin.  Some 
are  deadly — the  teaching  which  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  seems  to  hold  as  applying  to  all  sin — and 
others  are  not.  These  last  can  obtain  forgiveness 
through  prayer,  and  through  the  intercession  of  Christ. 
"My  little  children,  I  write  these  things  to  you  that 
ye  sin  not" — sinlessness  is  thus  the  ideal  and  normal 
position  which  the  writer  hopes  for —  "and  if  any  one 
sin,  we  have  an  advocate  with  the  Father,  Jesus  Christ 
the  righteous." 

Here  we  get  two  important  developments  of  doc- 
trine :  first,  the  distinction  between  mortal  and  venial 
sin,  and  secondly,  the  attribution  to  Christ  not  only 
of  the  function,  which  was  originally  that  of  the 
Messiah,  of  cleansing  from  sin  and  admitting  those 
who  had  thus  been  made  pure  into  his  kingdom  of 
sinless  saints,  but  of  the  perpetual  cleansing  and  inter- 
ceding for  the  members  of  his  Church.  The  changed 
point  of  view  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  Christians 
necessitated  a  corresponding  change  with  regard  to 
the  functions  of  the  Christ. 

Over  against  this  qualitative  distinction  between 
deadly  and  venial  as  a  basis  for  the  solution  of  the 
practical  problem  of  sin  after  baptism,  we  find  an 
independent  attempt  in  what  may  be  called  a  quantita- 
tive manner.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Marcion, 
though  admitting  the  principle  of  rebaptism,  imposed 
a  limit  on  the  number  of  times  that  this  might  take 
place.  As  compared  with  the  method  suggested  in  I 
John,  this  may  fairly  be  called  a  quantitative  limit  to 
forgivable  sin,  and  from  the  "Shepherd"  of  Hermas 


224        The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

we  find  that  in  the  Church  at  Rome,  although  Mar- 
cion's  doctrine  of  rebaptism  was  rejected,  the  quanti- 
tative system  was  introduced,  probably  even  before 
the  coming  of  Marcion,  in  order  to  deal  with  the  prac- 
tical difficulty  of  sin  among  baptized  Christians. 

Hermas  discusses  the  matter  in  the  third  chapter 
of  the  fourth  Mandate.  "I  will  venture,"  he  says, 
"to  ask  one  thing  more.  ...  I  have  heard  from 
certain  teachers  that  there  is  no  further  repentance 
beyond  that,  when  we  went  down  into  the  water,  and 
received  remission  (a^eatv)  of  our  former  sins. "  It  is 
clear  that,  even  if  this  be  not  a  direct  allusion  to  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  which,  as  I  Clement  shows, 
was  early  known  in  Rome,  it  is  at  least  a  reference  to 
the  same  stern  attitude  towards  sin  after  baptism 
which  that  Epistle  represents.  To  this  the  angel 
replied,  "Yes,  that  is  so;  for  he  who  has  received 
remission  of  sins  must  not  sin  again,  but  live  in  purity 
(ayveia) x;  but  since  you  inquire  into  everything,  I  will 
explain  this  point  also  to  you,  though  without  giving 
occasion  to  future  Christians  or  those  who  are  faithful. 
For  these  two  classes  are  offered  no  repentance  for  sin, 
but  have  remission  of  their  former  sins.  So  then  for 
those  called  before  these  days  the  Lord  has  appointed 
a  repentance  .  .  .  and  to  me  has  been  given  the 
control  of  this  repentance.  But  I  say  to  you,  said  he, 
after  that  great  and  solemn  call,  if  a  man  be  tempted 
by  the  devil,  and  sin,  he  has  one  repentance;  but  if  he 

1  This  word  indicates  clearly  the  type  of  sin  which  loomed 
largest  to  the  early  Christian  mind.  It  also  raises  the  question 
whether  marriage  after  baptism  was  contemplated  as  allowable. 
Marcion,  of  course,  forbade  it ;  but  this  was  not  mere  heresy,  for 
it  seems  probable  that  Tertullian,  even  in  his  pre-Montanist 
days,  did  the  same,  and  so  probably,  much  later,  did  Aphraates. 


Sin  after  Baptism  225 

sin  lightly  and  repent,  it  is  unprofitable  for  that  man, 
for  scarcely  shall  he  live. " 

No  one  would  maintain  that  this  passage  is  in  all 
respects  easy  to  understand — Hermas  is  not  a  writer 
who  attains  clearness  by  attention  to  detail — but  the 
general  meaning  is  tolerably  plain.  For  the  future  a 
modification  is  introduced  into  the  original  plan  of 
salvation,  according  to  which  sin  after  baptism  was 
deadly,  and  a  chance — but  only  a  single  chance — of 
efficient  repentance  is  offered  to  those  who  have 
thus  sinned.  This  does  not  give  a  direct  remission 
of  sins  as  baptism  does,  but  offers  the  chance  of 
an  ultimate  remission,  if  the  sinner  does  not  again 
fall,  but  remains  constantly  obedient  to  the  angel  of 
repentance. 

It  is  plain  that  this  conception  of  repentance  is  the 
first  step  towards  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  sacramental 
penance,  for  though  drawing  a  distinction  between  it 
and  baptism,  it  nevertheless  places  it  in  the  same  class. 
We  may  also  guess  that  there  was  some  special  reason 
for  the  change,  and  this  is  likely  to  have  been  some 
persecution  or  other  crisis  which  had  led  to  an  ex- 
traordinary amount  of  backsliding;  but  the  chronol- 
ogy of  Hermas  does  not  allow  us  to  identify  this 
with  any  certainty;  all  that  can  be  said  is  that  not 
long  before  a.d.  140  is  the  most  generally  probable 
date. 

It  should  also  be  noted  that  Hermas  is  careful  not 
to  throw  any  doubt  on  the  original  truth  of  the  stern 
doctrine  previously  held;  he  fully  accepts  it,  but 
claims  to  have  had  a  new  revelation  of  an  offer  made 
by  God  in  modification  of  it. 

This  elevation  of  repentance  to  a  rank  similar  to 
that  of  baptism  was  not  the  only  way  of  dealing  with 
is 


226         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

the  problem  known  to  Hermas.  He  warns  his  readers 
against  the  suggestion  of  postponing  baptism  in  order 
to  escape  the  responsibility  for  a  pure  life  (cf.  Vis.  3, 
7,  3).  Such  a  suggestion  was  of  course  very  natural 
to  those  who  (like  the  ordinary  "once-born"  person) 
are  quite  well  contented  with  the  world  as  it  is,  but 
wish,  in  order  to  be  safe,  to  do  what  is  necessary  to 
secure  equal  comfort  in  the  world  to  come.  Such 
persons  do  not  in  the  least  cry  out  to  be  "released 
from  this  body  of  death";  they  wish  to  remain  in  it 
as  long  as  possible;  but  they  believe,  on  authority, 
that  at  death  they  will  pass  into  a  different  sphere  of 
life,  and  they  desire  to  make  certain  that  they  are 
doing  what  is  necessary  for  their  future  well-being. 
If  they  are  told,  as  they  were  in  the  second  century, 
that  initiation  into  the  mysteries,  whether  Christian 
or  Pagan,  will  secure  what  they  wish,  they  will  be 
initiated.  But  let  there  be  no  undue  haste:  the  Chris- 
tian mysteries,  at  all  events,  entail  an  unpleasant 
asceticism,  and  had  better  be  postponed  as  long  as 
possible.  Such  reasoning,  mutatis  mutandis,  is  natural 
to  the  "once-born "  who  has  been  forced  into  a  system 
produced  originally  by  the  "twice-born."  It  tends 
at  present  in  Protestant  circles  to  a  so-called  "death- 
bed repentance,"  and  to  a  philanthropy  deferred  for 
old  age,  or  distributed  later,  though  more  lavishly,  by 
testamentary  dispositions.  In  the  early  Church  it  led 
to  deferred  baptism.  Such  a  practice  was  never 
encouraged  in  the  great  Church,  though  Tertullian  in 
his  treatise  on  baptism  (probably  written  before  his 
Montanist  days)  was  inclined  to  think  the  danger  of 
premature  baptism  greater  than  that  of  a  postpone- 
ment. Among  heretics  the  custom  was  usual  enough, 
and   some   of   them — for   instance,   the   Marcosians 


Sin  after  Baptism  227 

mentioned  by  Irenaeus1 — even  practised  a  baptism  of 
— not  for — the  dead. 

From  the  conception  of  repentance  found  in  Hermas 
to  the  idea  of  other  sacraments  to  neutralize  sin  after 
baptism  was  only  a  step.  Exactly  when  and  by  whom 
it  was  first  taken  is  more  difficult  to  say.  Probably 
there  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  view  which  sees  a 
connection  between  this  movement  and  the  difference 
between  the  original  Marcan  text  of  the  institution 
of  the  Eucharist,  and  the  Matthaean  redaction.  In 
Mark  we  read  (xiv.,  24),  "This  is  my  blood  of  the 
covenant,  which  is  poured  out  for  many,"  to  which 
Matthew  (xxvi.,  28)  adds,  "for  the  remission  of  sins," 
while  he  also  changes  the  preceding  "and  they  all 
drank  of  it"  into  the  command  "drink  ye  all  of  it." 
It  is  as  nearly  certain  as  anything  can  be  that  the 
earliest  view  of  the  Eucharist  did  not  regard  it  as  a 
means  of  obtaining  forgiveness  of  sins;  while  a  little 
later  this  was  equally  certainly  a  prevalent  view. 
May  we  not  see  some  plausibility  in  the  suggestion 
that  the  problem  of  sin  after  baptism  tended  to  give 
a  changed  importance  to  the  Eucharist,  and  that  the 
Matthaean  text — as  contrasted  with  Mark — shows 
the  change? 

A  similar  suggestion  may  be  made,  though  quite 
diffidently,  about  John  xiii.,  1-20,  which  describes  the 
washing  of  the  disciples'  feet  at  the  Last  Supper.  It 
is,  of  course,  well  known  that  the  Fourth  Gospel  does 
not  describe  the  institution  of  the  Eucharist,  just  as 
it  does  not  describe  the  institution  of  baptism,  yet  few 
will  dispute  that  it  is  from  beginning  to  end  thoroughly 
sacramental,  and  that  there  are  implied  references  to 
the  Christian  mysteries  on  almost  every  page.    Here 

1  Adv.  Haer.y  I.,  xiv.,4. 


228         The  Stewardship  of  Faith 

in  chapter  xiii.  the  reference  to  the  Eucharist  is  quite 
clear,  though  only  implicit,  and  I  believe  that  the  real 
meaning  may  be  that  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  means 
of  cleansing  Christians  from  the  stains  of  post-baptis- 
mal sin.  Baptism  was  washing  (XoueaOat,  cf.  the 
XouTpov  Tfjs  xaXtYYeveafas  of  Titus  iii.,  5),  and  that 
could  not  be  repeated;  therefore  Peter's  request — 
"Lord,  not  my  feet  only,  but  also  my  hands  and  my 
head" — was  refused.  The  disciples  had  been  "wash- 
ed," they  were  clean,  and  of  this  washing  there  was 
no  need  or  possibility  of  repetition.  But  even  he  who 
has  been  washed  may  have  need  to  remove  the  dust, 
and  thus  must  "wash  his  feet."  When  we  find  this 
teaching  so  clearly  glancing  at  baptism  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  given  on  the  occasion  which 
was  known  to  be  connected  with  the  Eucharist,  I  think 
that  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  suggestion  that  it 
was  intended  to  point  to  the  Eucharist  as  a  remedy  for 
the  stain  of  sin  after  baptism. 

However  this  may  be,  and  of  course  the  interpreta- 
tion suggested  can  never,  at  the  best,  be  regarded  as 
more  than  possible,  we  can  certainly  see  in  heretical 
bodies  the  traces  of  other  sacramental  institutions 
intended  to  remove  sin  after  baptism.  The  history 
of  these  is  outside  the  scope  of  this  note:  it  must 
suffice  to  draw  attention  to  two  interesting  examples. 

The  Marcosians,  in  the  second  century,  were  in  the 
habit  of  using  a  second  sacrament,  closely  resembling 
baptism,  to  which  they  gave  the  name  of  "Redemp- 
tion" (dxoXuTpwatq),  and  explained  all  passages  in 
the  New  Testament  containing  the  word  as  references 
to  this  sacrament  (see  Iren.  I.,  xiv.). 

Still  more  striking  is  the  teaching  of  the  Pistis 
Sophia  a  century  or  less  later,  which  describes  a  whole 


Sin  after  Baptism  229 

series  of  sacraments  or  mysteries,  and  in  chapters 
civ.-cvi.  gives  a  number  of  rules  governing  the  admis- 
sion of  backsliders  to  renewed  participation  in  the 
mysteries,  based  on  the  interpretation  of  Matthew 
xviii.,  21/.  (which  enjoins  forgiveness  "unto  seventy 
times  seven")  as  a  reference  to  sin  after  initiation 
into  the  mysteries. 

Thus  in  the  first  attempts  of  the  early  Church  to 
deal  with  the  problem  of  sin  after  baptism  we  can  see 
the  beginnings  of  the  later  elaborate  ecclesiastical 
edifice  of  doctrine  and  practice.  The  Shepherd  of 
Hermas  shows  us  the  origin  of  the  doctrine  of  "pen- 
ance." The  Johannine  Epistles  show  the  beginning 
of  the  distinction  between  venial  and  deadly  sin,  which 
is  such  an  important  feature  of  the  later  casuistry,  and 
of  the  propitiatory  function  of  the  risen  Christ,  which 
is  essential  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Mass.  Finally  the 
Matthaean  version  of  the  institution  of  the  Eucharist* 
and  the  Johannine  account  of  the  washing  of  the 
disciples'  feet  show  traces  of  the  general  development 
of  the  doctrine  of  sacramental  cleansing  for  post- 
baptismal  sin,  of  which  Penance  and  the  Mass  are  the 
surviving  results. 


INDEX 


Acta    Pilati,   128;    Pauli   (see 

Acts  of  Paul) 
Actium,  72 
Acts,  60,  91,  93,  94,  in;  date 

of,  93;   of   John,   169,   174; 

of  Paul,    168,    169;  sources 

of,  48,  119 
Adam,  156 

Administration,  local,  69 
Adoptionism,  169 
Adonai-Jahveh,  113 
Africa,  68 
Age,  New,  133,  134,  208,  209, 

211 
Ages,  Dark,  70,  209;  Middle, 

190,  195,  199 
Alexander  the  Great,  71 
Alexandria,  92 
All  Father,  gnostic,  145 
Allegory,  127,  152,  157,  199 
Angels,  in 

Anointed  One  (see  Messiah) 
Antioch,  63,  67,  89,  91,  96,  108 
Aphraates,  224 
Apollos,  97,  118 
Apocalypses,  18,  51 
Apologists,  Christian,  126-128 
Apuleius,  85 
Aquila,  97,  98 
Arianism,  177 
Armenia,  68 
Arnold,  Matthew,  103 
Ascension,  119 
Asceticism,  148 
Asia  Minor,  92 
Astralism,  74,  75 
Astronomica  of  Manilius,  74 
Athenagoras,  159 
Atonement,  doctrine  of,   193- 

195 

Attis,  81 


Augustus,  72,  74 
Authorities,  municipal,  69 

B 

Bab,  118 

Baptism,  65,  95,  96,  100,  108, 

116,  118,  119,  136,  171,  220, 

225,  227,  228;  Second,  136; 

sin  after,  136,  137,  213-229 
Barabbas,  42,  43 
Barbarians,  134 
Barnabas,  63;  Epistle  of,  94 
Baruch,  18,  26,  28;  apocalypse 

of,  216 
Basilides,  147,  148 
Beelzebub,  48 
Beha,  118 

Bethune  Baker,  J.,  178 
Bevan,  E.,  74 
Bible,  51,  52,  53 
Birth,  171 

Bousset,  W.,  113,  145,  148 
Browne,  E.  G.,  118 
Burkitt,  F.  C,  27 


Caesar,  72 
Caesars,  71 
Caesarea  Philippi,  47 
Catastrophe,  17 
Catholic,  66,  157,  222 
Catholics,  137,  138,  139,  141, 

145,  161 
Catholicism,  159,  168 
Cause,  First,  151 
Celsus,  132,  133 
Charismata,  204 
Christ,  the,  14,  49,   170,  171- 

I73»  I7&>  22l\  two  natures 

of     (see    Two      natures    of 

Christ) 


231 


232 


Index 


Christians,  97;  Hebrew,  62; 
Gentile,  64;  as  the  heirs  of 
promise,  94;  Judaizing,  66 

Christianity,  67,  87,  98,  99, 
128,  191;  Catholic,  89,  120, 

121,      123,      124,      I49,      162, 

202; early,    23;    Gentile,  95, 

99;    Hellenistic,  64,  94,   96; 

modern,  125;  as  movement, 

189-191;  uninstructed,  125, 

126,  168-188 
Christmas,  170 
Christology,  95,  96,   108,  113, 

126,  178-188,  196 
Church,   51-53,   71,  113,  133, 

199;  Anglican,  205;  Catholic, 

5,  24,  91,  102,  143,  190,  205; 

Greek,  205;  Protestant,  143, 

202,  203,  205;  Roman,  142, 

205,  224 
Churches,  the,  66,  201-206 
Cicero,  74 

Circumcision,   63,   95 
Civilization,  9,  10,  203 
Clement,  I.,  48,  224,  II.,  169 
Coin,  Roman,  45;  Jewish,  45 
Colossians,  114 
Columbus,  15 

Commercial  method,  206-207 
Communicatio  idiomatum,  179 
Confessional,  138,  141,  142 
Continuity,  historic,  131 
Conybeare,  F.  C,  168 
Corinth,  77,  102 
Corinthians,  99,  120 
Cornelius,  63-66 
Cornutus,  115 
Corssen,  P.,  74 
Creation,     145,     157;    gnostic 

view  of,  1 74 
Creator,  147,  148,  150 
Creed,  Apostles',    150;    Atha- 

nasian,  180;  Christocentric, 

65;  Nicene,  221 
Creeds,  199-201 
Criticism,  higher,   23;  liberal, 

5i 

Cross,  47 

Crucifixion,  prophecies  of  the, 
128;  cry  of  despair  at,  47 


Cults,  Oriental,  88,  89 
Cumont,  F.,  75,  83 
Cyprus,  63 


David,  43 

Death,  78,  80;  expectation  of, 

46 
Deism,  no,  in 
Demiurge  (see  Creator) 
Demons,  61 ;  false  fulfilment  of 

prophecy  by,  127 
Demonology,  61 
Descensus  ad  Inferos,  128 
Destiny,  75,  82 

Determinism,  74,  81;  astral,  87 
Determinists,  75 
Devil,  149,  169 
Didache,  48 
Dieterich,  A.,  83 
Dill,  W.,  70,  76,  128 
Dispersion,  62 
Docetism,  168 
Dorner,  I.,  184 
Drews,  Prof.  E.,  174 
Dualism,  gnostic,  152 
Durham,  152 

E 

East,  80 

Ecclesiasticism,  33 

Ego,  160 

Egypt,  12,  68 

Elect  one,  13 

Elijah,  61 

Elisha,  61 

Emperor,  divinity  of  the,  no 

Emperors,  cult  of  the,  71 

Empire,  Babylonian,  6;  British, 
9,68;  concept  of,  9;  Roman, 
4,  8,  50,  62,  67-72,  74,  76, 
79,  87,  91,  97,  121,  128,  129, 
131,  132,  134,  206,  209 

Empires,  great,  6 

Enoch,  12,  26,  28 

Ephesus,  97,  118 

Epiphany,  170 

Epiphanius,  220 

Episcopacy,  204 


Index 


233 


Epistles,     93,    94,     101,     Hi; 

Johannine,  229;  Pauline,  91, 

92 
Erasmus,  131 
Eerdmans,  B.  D.,  43 
Eschatology,    11,    14,    16,   37, 

40-42,  61,  102,  112,  116,  117, 

120 
Essenes,  116 

Ethic,  "interim,"  40;  world  ac- 
cepting, 38,  73,  82,  121,  131, 

J33»  I9°5  world  renouncing, 

38,  39,  82,  121,  132,  190 
Ethics,  2,  11,  37,  79,  100,  189, 

206-212;  Christian,  104,  132, 

212 
Eucharist,  95,   116,   119,   120, 

227-229 
Europe,  92 
Eusebius,  118 
Exegesis,  Jewish,  94 
Experience,   198;  and  history, 

1 73-181;      psychical,      105; 

religious,  105,  124,  143,  173, 

175,  176 
Expositor,  213 


Faith,  30,  100,  137,  142;  heal- 
ing, 30 
Fall,  the,  157,  158,  169 
Fate,  74,  75,  77,  81,  82 
Faye,  E.  de,  145 
Fights,  wild  beast,  70 
Flesh,  148 

Flesh,  Gnostic  view  of,  174 
Forgiveness  of  sins,  30 
Formula,  Trinitarian,  118 
Fourth  Gospel,  117,  120,  227 
Frazer,  J.  G.,  71 


Galatia,  63 

Galilee,  26,  97,  98;    Jesus  in 

{see  Jesus);  prophet  of,  115; 

synagogues  in,  98 
Gaul,  68,  70 
Games,  70 
Genesis,    account  of   creation 


in,  149,  152;  cosmogony  in, 

150,  153 
Gentiles,  63 
Glover,  T.  R.,  132 
God,  of  creation,  151 ;  belief  in, 

126;    in    man,    75;    modern 

view  of,  153;  personal,  154; 

of  religion,  151;   son  of  {see 

Son  of  God);  spirit  of,  172; 

union  with,  82;  in  the  world, 

73 
God-fearers,  89,  91,  109,  113, 

116,  117,  121 
Gods,  Latin,  87 
Gnostics,  169;  Weltanschauung 

of  the,  157 
Gnosticism,  39,  82,   125,   126, 

145-168;  Christianized  forms 

of,  146;  redemption  in,  147 
Gore,  C,  51 
Gospels,  22 ;  historical  criticism 

of  the,  4 
Grace,  141 
Greece,  68 
Greek,  101,  102, 104,  107,  no; 

modern,  109 
Greeks,  69 


H 


Harnack,  A.  von,  93,  119 
Hastings,  J.,  117 
Head  of  Days,  13 
Heathenism,    73,  78,  125-127, 

129,  132 
Heaven,  102 

Healthy-minded,  the,  155,  219 
Hebrews,  114;  Epistle  to,  214, 

215,  220,  221,  223,  224 
Heitmuller,  W.,  117 
Hellenistic  movement,  62,  63 
Hellenizers,  99,  100 
Heretics,  222 
Hermas,   150,   169,   170,  223- 

227,  229 
Hermes,  115 

Hermetic  literature,  115,  148 
High  priests,  42 
Hilgenfeld,  A.,  145 
Hippolytus,  148 


234 


Index 


History  and   experience,  173- 

181 
History,  Old  Testament,  127 
Holland,  66,  139 
Hosanna,  42 


Illusion,  14-16 
Incarnation,  170,  194 
India,  15 
Individuality,  permanence  of, 

165 

Infallibility,  52 
Inge,  Dean,  79 
Institutions,    preservation    of, 

131 
Internationalism,  210-21 1 
Interpretation,  symbolical,  152 
Irenaeus,  148,  227,  228 
Isaiah,  49 
Isis,  81,  85 

Israel,  20,  32,  140,  169 
Italy,  70 


James,  W.,  108,  135,  196,  218, 
219 

Jerusalem,  21,  43,  47,  60,  62, 
63,  91,  108,  119;  Church  at, 
94»  95>  IX9;  Council  of,  63; 
triumphal  entry  into,  49 

Jesus,  6,  25,  26,  28,  30-33,  37, 
44-47,  49,  50,  82,  95,  61, 
108,  no,  113,  118,  123,  171, 
174-176;  baptism  of,  50; 
crucifixion  of,  97,  98;  dis- 
ciples of,  36;  divinity  of,  109; 
in  Galilee,  119;  historic,  4, 
22,27,41,51,53,  173;  life  of, 
24,  127,  156;  "Lord,"  no; 
preaching  of,  28,  98;  resur- 
rection of,  50;  risen,  60, 
61;  suffering  of,  120;  teach- 
ing of,  34,  36,  42,  60,  97 

Jews,  6,  8,  14,  17,  19,  20,  49, 
101,  102,  104,  106,  107,  no; 
Hellenistic,  62 

John,    acts    of    (see    Acts    of 


John);     baptism     of,     116; 

the    Baptist,    26,    48,    221; 

Gospel  of,  23,  24,  30,  34 
Josephus,  43,  61,  93 
Jubilees,  Book  of,  216 
Judaism,  4,  87,  95,  98,  99,  104; 

Liberal,  86;  Palestinian,  86 
Judaizers,  99,  100,  108 
Judas,  42 

Justice,  abstract,  192-195 
Justin  Martyr,  126,  127,  214 

K 

Kingdom  (see  Kingdom  of 
God);  coming  of  the,  46;  of 
God,  19,  26,  27,  29,  31,  33, 
35,  36,  40,  47,  64,  65,  72, 
100,  109,  112,  113,  116,  119, 
120,  132,  162;  of  heaven 
(see  Kingdom  of  God) ;  Mes- 
sianic, 215,  216 

Kings,  Seleucid,  71 


Law,  77, 95, 99;  ceremonial,  95; 
the,  20 

Levi,  Testament  of,  216 

Leszynski,  43 

Life,  American,  68 ;  eternal,  102 ; 
future,  103,  126;  permanence 
of,  167;  survival  of,  166 

Literature,  apocalyptic,  18,  51; 
Hermetic,  115,  148 

Liturgy,  84 

Logos,  50,  81,  114,  115,  123, 
170,  185-187,  194;  incarna- 
tion of,  195 

Lord,  109,  111-114,  117,  122, 
123,  173,  !75;  of  spirits,  13 

Lucius,  85 

Luke,  98,  101;  Gospel  of,  24, 
25,  60,  162 

Lumley,  152 

M 

Magic,  84 
Manilius,  74 
Maran  atha,  113 


Index 


235 


Marcion,    148,    150,  220-221, 

223-224 
Marcosians,  226,  228 
Mark,     conclusion     of,     161 ; 

Gospel  of,  24-26,  29,  60,  162 
Mary,  Virgin,  169 
Mass,  137-139,  229 
Matthew,   Gospel  of,  24,   25, 

162 
McGiffert,  A.  C.,  150 
Meal,  sacrificial,  120 
Meeting,  Quakers',  139 
Memory,  survival  of,  166 
Mesopotamia,  68 
Messiah,  14,  26,  42,  45,  46,  49, 

50,    61,    95,    97,    109,    in, 

115,  121,  216,  220,  223 
Messianic   claims,   42;   secret, 

42,  119 
Miners,  152 

Ministry,  189,  190;  sacramen- 
tal, 123,  135,  137,  201-206 
Mission,   Antiochene,    64,    95, 

96,   98,   99,    108,    in,    113; 

Jerusalem,  99;  Jewish,  86,  89 
Mithras,  81 
Modernist,  185,  187 
Money  exchangers,  45 
Monopoly,  commercial,  44 
Monotheism,  10,  11,  72,  87,  95, 

109,  no 
Morality,  106 
Moses,  apocalypse  of,  216 
Mysteries,    82,   95,    105,    229; 

Christian,  226,  227;  heathen, 

155,  226 
Mysticism,  sacramental,  90 
Mythology,     115,     127,     129; 

Babylonian,  12 
Myths,  126 


N 


Names,  in  invocations,  220 
Nationalism,  6 
Nationality,  9 
Nations,  common  superior  of, 

9,  212;  small,  6 
Nero,  77,  78 
Nestorius,  178 


Nestorianism,  177 
Nicodemus,  117 


Olympus,  87 

Omnipotence,  194 

Once-born,  217,  219,  226 

Oort,  H.,  43 

Oracles,  Sibylline,  86,  116 

Orders,  204;  Episcopal,  65 

Ordination,  204-205 

Origen,  132 

Orthodoxy,  ecclesiastical,  157 


Palestine,  62 

Pantheism,  no 

Pantheon,  76 

Papyrus,  Paris,  83 

Paul,  63,  92,  93,  97-99,  105, 

106,  108,  no,  113,  117,  118, 

120,  145,  160,  162,  214;  acts 

of  {see  Acts  of  Paul) 
Penance,  137,  225,  229 
Penitence,  136 
People,  the  chosen,  10 
Period,  Messianic,  65 
Perseus,  128 
Persius,  115 

Personality,  182-184, 198 
Peter,  47,  62,  64,  66,  67,  119; 

Gospel  of,  169 
Pharisees,  21,  35,43 
Philanthropy,  142 
Philo,  86 

Philosophers,  Stoic,  126 
Philosophy,  astral,  81 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  the,  218 
Pistis  Sophia,  148,  228 
Pleroma,  145,  146 
Pliny,  69,  70 
Plutarch,    127,   128,   130,   131, 

157;  De  Iside  et  Osiride,  126; 

intellectual      deception     of, 

129 
Poimandres,  148 
Politicians,  211 
Polycarp,  martyrdom  of,  48 


236 


Index 


Pope,  66 

Posidonius,  74,  80 
Preaching,  142 
Priesthood,  Catholic,  141 
Priests,  45;  Anglican,  142 
Priscilla,  97 

Privilege,  maintenance  of,  131 
Products,      social  waste,   133, 

134,  135 
Progress,  political,  67 
Proletariat,  132 
Proost,  K.  F.,  35 
Prophet,  48,  no 
Prophets,  Jewish,  170 
Proselytism,  64 
Protestant,  137-139,  141,  144. 

145 

Protestantism,  51,  142,  202 
Providence,  77 
Psychology,  108,  184 
Ptolemies,  71 
Publicans,  32 
Pulpit,  142,  143 
Purgatory,  145,  163,  164 
Purification,  laws  of,  60 
Puritanism,  77 
Purpose,  197;  divine,  158 

Q 

Q,  25,  29,  48 
Quakers,  66,  138,  139 
Quietism,  43 


Rabbis,  45 

Race,  new,  133 

Reality,  154 

Reason,  77 

Rebaptism,  220-222 

Redeemer,  148 

Redeemer-God,  81,  114,  121 

Redemption,  156, 228;  in  Chris- 
tianity, 149;  Gnostic  and 
Catholic  theories  of,  157; 
Pauline  theory  of,  156 

Reformation,  131,  142,  163 

Regeneration,  84,  105,  106, 
117 


Reitzenstein,  R.,  145 

Religion,  1,  52,  106,  198; 
Jewish,  60;  Roman,  74; 
theistic,  155 

Religions,  mystery,  80,  86,  113, 
145;  Oriental,  71 

Repentance,  117,  225 

Research,  psychical,  165 

Responsibility,  131 

Restatement,  191 

Resuscitation  of  the  flesh,  162 

Resurrection,  46,  102, 145,  171 ; 
of  the  flesh,  160, 167;  general, 
161 ;  Gnostic  view  of,  159, 
162;  Paul's  doctrine  of,  160 

Reunion,  66 

Revivals,  219 

Righteousness,  100 

Romans,  21,  42,  45;  Epistle  to, 

215 

Rome,  77,  92;  Church  of  (see 
Church  of  Rome) 


Sabbath,  60 

Sacrament,  83,  84,  96, 120, 122, 
136,  140,  190,  229 

Sadducees,  21,  43 

Salvation,  80,  101,  112;  per- 
sonal, 102;  of  unbaptised, 
192 

Sanday,  W.,  184 

Samaria,  140 

Sandan,  81 

Saviours,  73 

Schism,  222-223 

Schmidt,  C,  168 

Schiirer,  E.,  43 

Science,  economic,  208 ;  men  of, 
210 

Scribes,  20,  28,  31,  33~35,  45; 
teaching  of  the,  29 

Scripture,  66;  interpretation  of, 
46 

Secret,  Messianic,  48,  50 

Semitism,  86 

Seneca,  74-77,  79,  82 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  29 

Servant  of  the  Lord,  48,  49 


Index 


237 


Service,  Church,  138,  139 

Silence,  146 

Sin,  136,  217,  220,  222;  after 

baptism,    213;    meaning   of, 

217-219 
Sinlessness,  214,  216,  220 
Sinner,  32 

Smith,  Prof.  W.  B.,  174 
Social  values,  37 
Socialism,  208-209 
Society,  service  of,  131 
Solomon,  odes  of,  169 
Son  of  God,  172 
Son  of  Man,  13,  46,  49 
Sophocles,  77 
Soul,  journey  of,  80 
Souls,  sick,  135 
Spain,  68 
Spirit,    148,    171,    173;    Holy, 

48,  52,  61,  62,  65,  67,  97, 

112,  169-171,  213 
States,  the  United,  8,  9 
Stephen,  62 
Stoics,  75,  79,  100 
Stoicism,  74,  90;  astral,  74 
Suffering  servant  {see  Servant 

of  the  Lord) 
Suggestion,  137 
Synagogues,  26,  87,  89,  100 
Synoptic  Gospels,  30 
Syria,  68 
Syrians,  69 


Tammuz,  81 

Teaching,  Catholic,  132;  Jew- 
ish, 27 

Temple,  the,  44,  60 

Tertullian,  224 

Testament,  Old,  prophetic  in- 
terpretation of  the,  127; 
Old,  symbolical  interpreta- 
tion of,  130 

Theology,  2,  87,  189;  Catholic, 


188;  Lutheran,  30;  Pauline, 
30;  Protestant,  164;  Stoic,  76 

Theol.  Tijdschrift,  43 

Tradition,  66 

Trajan,  69 

Transmutation  of  buried  flesh, 

163 

Trinitarian  formula,  118 
Trinity,  170 

Twice-born,  218-220,  226 
Two   natures  of   Christ,   doc- 
trine of,  181-188 


U 


Unitarians,  66,  154 

Universe,  catastrophic  view  of, 

11 
Usener,  H.,  168,  170 


V 


Valentinus,  147 
Voice  from  heaven,  26 
"Vulgar     Christentum"     {see 
Christianity  Uninstructed) 

W 

War,  20 

Wellhausen,  J.,  162 
Weltanschauung,  74,  149,  153, 

158,  210,  211 
Wendland,  P.,  145 
Wensink,  J.,  43 
Wessely,  C,  83 
Windisch,  H.,  21,  35,  216 
Wordsworth,  W.,  140 
Word,  Incarnate  {see  Logos) 
World,     Graeco-Roman,     87; 

material,  147 


Zadok,  43 

Zealots,  21,31,35,  43,  44 


Crown  Theological  Library 

THE  volumes  comprising  the  "Crown  Theological 
Library  "  have  been  selected  with  a  view  of  meet- 
ing the  religious  questionings  of  the  present  age, 
and  each  contributi  n  has  been  prepared  by  an  ac- 
knowledged authority  on  the  subject  with  which  it  deals. 
The  standpoint  of  the  series  is  at  once  reverent  and  liberal. 
Its  object  is  to  combine  respect  for  religion  with  respect 
for  historic  and  scientific  truth,  and  to  present  a  series  of 
studies  on  the  great  problems  of  human  life  which  are  free 
from  all  dogmatic  prepossessions. 

LIST  OF  VOLUMES 
Each  Cr.  8vo.     Uniform  in  Binding 

Addis,  W,  E.,  Rev.    Hebrew  Religion 

to  the  Establishment  of  Judaism 

under  Ezra  .  .    $i  50  net 

Anglican    Liberalism.      By    Twleve 

Churchmen  .  .  .  .  1  50  net 
Bousset,  W.    Jesus  .         .      1  25  net 

What  is  Religion?  .       1  50  net 

Bowen,  C.  R.     The  Resurrection  in 

the  New  Testament  .      1  50  net 

Campbell,  J.  M.    Paul  the  Mystic. 

A  Study  in  Apostolic  Experiences.  1  50  net 
Cheyne,  T.     Biblical  Problems,  and 

the  New  Material  for  their  Solution  1  50  net 
Delitzsch,    F.      Babel    and    Bible. 

With  77  Illustrations,  .  .       1  50  net 

Eucken,   Rudolf.    The   Life   of  the 

Spirit 1  50  net 

Knowledge  and  Life  1  50  net 

Farnell,    L.    R.     The    Evolution    of 

Religion.     An  Anthropological 

Study 1  50  net 

Gardner,  Percy.     Modernity  and  the 

Churches   .  .  .  .  .       1  50  net 

New  York    G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons    London 


Crown  Theological  Library 

Gardner,    Percy.       The     Religious 

Experience  of  St.  Paul  .  .    $i  50  net 

Harnack,  Adolf.     The  Acts  of  the 

Apostles  • 1  75  net 

Constitution  and  Law  of  the 
Church  in  the  First  Two 
Centuries  .  .  1  75  net 

The  Sayings  of  Jesus    .  1  75  net 

The  Date  of  the  Acts  and  of 

the  Synoptic  Gospels  .      1  75  net 

Luke  the  Physician       .  1  50  net 

Monasticism  and  The  Confes- 
sions of  St.  Augustine         .      1  50  net 
What  is  Christianity?    .  1  50  net 

Bible  Reading  in  the  *    rly 

Church     .         .         .  1  50  net 

and  Herrmann,   W.    The   Social 

Gospel 1  25  net 

Herrmann,  W.     Communion  of  the 

Christian  with  God      .  .  .      1  50  net 

Faith  and  Morals.         .         .      1  50  net 
Herford.     Pharisaism  .  1  50  net 

Jones.     An    Interpretation    of    Eu- 

cken's  Philosophy        .         .         .      1  50  net 
Kittel,  Rudolf.     The  Scientific  Study 

of  the  Old  Testament  .  1  50  net 

Kruger,  Paul.     The  Papacy.     The 

Idea  and  its  Exponents         .  1  50  net 

Lake,  Kirsopp.     Historical  Evidence. 

Resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ         .      1  50  net 
Lobstein,   P.     The   Virgin   Birth   of 

Christ.  A  Christological  Study       .       1  25  net 

Loisy,  Alfred.   The  Religion  of  Israel.      1  50  net 

Marti,   Karl.     The  Religion  of  the 

Old  Testament.    Its  Place  among 

the  Religions  of  the  Nearer  East.        1  25  net 

Modernism,  Programme  of  1  50  net 

New  York    G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons   London 


Crown  Theological  Library 

Neville,  Edouard.    The  Old  Egyptian 

Faith $1  50  net 

Otto,  Rudolf.  Naturalism  and  Re- 
ligion .  .  .  .  1  50  net 

Peters,  John  P.  Early  Hebrew  Story. 
A  Study  of  the  Origin,  the  Value, 
and  the  Historical  Background  of 
the  Legends  of  Israel  .  .       1  25  net 

Modern  Christianity      .  1  50  net 

Pfleiderer,  Otto.  Early  Christian 
Conception  of  Christ.  Its  Signifi- 
cance and  Value  in  the  History  of 
Religion     .  .  .  .  1  25  net 

Religion  of  Christ  in  the  Twentieth 

Century      .  .  .  .  1  50  net 

Reville,  J.     Liberal  Christianity.  Its 

Origin,  Nature,  and  Mission  .       1  25  net 

Sabatier,  Auguste.  The  Doctrine  of 
Atonement,  and  the  Religion  of 
Modern  Culture .  .  .  .       1  25  net 

Scott,  E.  F.     The  Apologetic  of  the 

New  Testament  .  .  1  50  net 

Seeberg,    Reinhold.       Fundamental 

Truths  of  the  Christian  Religion  .       1  50  net 

Stephens,  T.,  Editor.    The  Child  and 

Religion     .  .  .  1  50  net 

Torrey,  D.  C.   Protestant  Modernism      1  50  net 

Troeltsch.  Protestantism  and  Pro- 
gress .  .  .  .  .       1  50  net 

Tyrrell.  The  Programme  of  Modern- 
ism .  .  .  .  .       1  50  net 

Volter,  D.     Egypt  and  the  Bible       .       1  50  net 

Von  Soden.  Books  of  the  New 
Testament;  Contributions  to  Early 
Christian  Literature     .  .  1  50  net 

Wimmer,  R.     My  Struggle  for  Light. 

Confessions  of  a  Preacher    .  .       1  25  net 

New  York    G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons   London 


PERSONALITY 

By  F.  B.  JEVONS,  Litt.D. 

Author  of 

"The  Idea  of  God,"  "Comparative 

Religions,"  etc. 

12°.     $1.00  net 

This  work  deals  with  the  problem 
of  personality,  especially  as  raised  by 
William  James  and  M.  Bergson.  If  a 
man  imagines  himself  bound,  in  defer- 
ence to  science  or  psychology,  to  deny 
the  existence  of  personality,  he  commits 
himself  to  saying  "  I  do  not  exist."  If 
he  shrinks  from  that  absurdity,  he  must 
accept  personality  as  a  reality :  a  person 
is  both  a  subject  who  knows  others  and 
an  object  of  others'  knowledge.  The 
bond,  however,  which  holds  persons, 
human  and  divine,  together,  cannot  be 
merely  intellectual:  it  must  be  emotional 
as  well  as  intellectual — the  bond  of  love. 

G,  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Date  Due 

FACULTY 

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